


the way that you move

by rainingover



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, Best Friends, Bickering, Ensemble Cast, Eventual Romance, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nakamoto Yuta is Whipped, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Taeil is the coolest character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2019-06-28 21:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15715314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainingover/pseuds/rainingover
Summary: Sicheng is beautiful and flexible as hell, and he doesn't give Yuta a second glance.So, obviously, Yuta decides he’s in love.(Or, a strip-club au in which doyu bicker, sicheng is a model employee & johnny is done with everyone).





	1. eager to please

The first thing that Yuta learns about the newest dancer to join Taeyong's team is that he’s eager to please, and this piques his interest right away. Doyoung isn’t interested in doing anything Yuta asks him to unless it relates to Jaehyun and even though Taeyong is one of his oldest friends, he is also Yuta’s manager, so he can’t be easily bossed around. Johnny plays around but at the end of the day he won’t actually help when Yuta decides he wants to swap Doyoung’s bottle of water backstage for a half litre of cider vinegar.

Yuta could do with a pliant friend. Plus, it helps that the new dancer is drop dead gorgeous. Like, the proper kind: the kind that makes Yuta think that if he doesn’t concentrate on not doing so he might just drop to his knees and profess his love as soon as they’re introduced.

He keeps his distance, just in case.

Yuta watches curiously from behind the bar as Taeyong gives their new recruit the full tour: pointing out the dressing rooms, the back office, the emergency exits. The new dancer is nodding furiously, engaged completely in the health and safety bullshit Taeyong is now spewing, fire extinguisher in hand (the one that Yuta thought was just a prop from someone's sexy firefighter routine until three months ago when they had that fire in the bar). He is tall but slim, back straight as he walks, looking back and forth to where Taeyong points out the private rooms, the backstage door and, finally, the bar.

Yuta raises a hand from the glasses he is putting away behind the bar and waves when Taeyong points to him. Taeyong turns back to say something and Yuta hopes with every fibre of his being that his manager is not slandering him to their newest dancer. He likes to give a good impression and even if Taeyong isn't painting a less than perfect picture of him, once the new guy meets Doyoung, Yuta has no chance.

He turns down the music and shouts, “I'm Yuta. Don't believe a word that anyone says about me!” and watches as Taeyong’s mouth curls itself into a tiny twist of distaste.

The new dancer just stands still, looking a little like a deer in headlights. He nods a few times and clutches his backpack tightly and then he's gone too soon, following Taeyong into the back office to sign his contract obediently.

It’s adorable.

The second, third and fourth things that Yuta learns about the new dancer are that his name is Sicheng, that he’s a student of traditional dance who is looking for part time work and that he can get his ankle behind his ear with ease.

“Which, will be really useful,” Taeyong is saying as he counts up the takings at the end of the night. “Because we don’t have a performer who is so graceful. He's trained, properly. Plus, I think he’ll actually listen to me. I’ve never seen anyone concentrating on my introduction so much.”

Yuta leans against the doorway of the back office and sighs. “He's beautiful. I'm going to take him under my wing and teach him everything I know.”

Taeyong looks up, eyes narrowed. “No,” he says.

“No what?” Yuta tries his best to look as innocent as the new dancer, Sicheng. But in trying to remember the earnest expression on his face from earlier, Yuta’s brain segues into flexibility and he can't keep up the facade.

“I know you, I know what you’re thinking.” Taeyong tsks and shoos him out of the office. "You don't want to be his _friend_."

Yuta laughs to himself as Taeyong goes back to counting notes and calls, “I have no idea what you mean,” as he leaves the office.

It's decided: he already has enough friends. Friends are overrated. Sicheng needs a wing to be sheltered under and maybe a hand to hold, a mouth to kiss, a dick to--

“I _will_ fire you one of these days, Yuta!” Taeyong calls from his office as though he is reading his friend’s mind.

"I believe you,” Yuta shouts back, laughing as he heads back to the bar.

 

\--

 

Sicheng is sitting quietly in the corner of the dressing room, applying liner to the corners of his eyes. Yuta tries not to stare, because that would be creepy, especially when he hasn’t even introduced himself yet. But it’s difficult not to, because even Sicheng’s mirror image is nothing short of beautiful, and Yuta is pretty damn sure this isn’t just his dick doing the thinking for once. It’s _different_.

Or, it isn't, but I could be. If his dick would stop making his brain imagine Sicheng in various different flexible poses. (Naked.)

“Hey. How are you settling in?” He smiles as he approaches Sicheng’s corner of the room.

Sicheng only smiles, which doesn’t answer the question, but it’s cute, so Yuta doesn’t even care.  It crosses his mind that maybe Sicheng doesn't want to be bothered, but he can't quite stop himself from sitting down in the chair next to him and leaning in.

"Did Taeyong bore you with the rules?" He asks, although he knows fully well that Taeyong will have - he's a good boss and he wouldn't dare leave a single thing out of his induction.

"Why? Will I be tested on it?" Sicheng asks. He pauses, eyeliner pencil in hand, and furrows his brow with worry.

"What? No, no don't worry about that." Yuta smiles. "I just wanted you to know that if you need anything, you can just ask any of us. We’ve all been new here before, we know how it feels. It can be a little...”

“Scary?” Sicheng suggests.

Yuta laughs. “Very. But you'll be fine. I heard you're a dancer major, so I guess you've performed in front of an audience before?”

Sicheng nods again. “I have," he says, "but not in a strip club.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” Yuta grins. “You’ll be great. And if you need a strong drink afterwards, just come see me at the main bar upstairs. I'm tending bar until one.”

Sicheng thinks about this. “Wait, aren't you a dancer too though? I thought you were, because...” He trails off.

“Because?” Yuta prompts. He wants to hear Sicheng say something that might suggest that Sicheng is as charmed by him as Yuta has been by Sicheng himself.

Yuta wants this compliment and he wants it badly, but in the end Sicheng doesn’t take the bait. “I didn’t think you just worked the bar, that’s all,” he says with a small shrug.

Yuta is disappointed, but only a little bit, so he still smiles and nods, and says, “I perform on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays but I tend bar most other nights. It's fun once you get used to the pace and you get to know the customers which means they request you for dances too. Plus, Taeyong lets you drink on the job.” He pauses. “Actually that's a lie, please don't tell him I do that.”

Sicheng laughs. “I won't tell him,” he says, earnestly, and Yuta knows he’s telling the truth, which is adorable but also pretty impressive. Yuta hasn’t got the feeling he can really trust anyone other than his closest of friends in a while, and even his closest friends are annoying sometimes. Doyoung, for example. “I promise.”

“I trust you,” he replies. “You know, I think you’re going to fit right in here.”

Sicheng’s pleased smile at Yuta’s words makes up for his lack of compliments, and Yuta slips out of the dressing room and heads back to the bar wearing a smile of his own.

 

\--

 

Doyoung elbows a woman wobbling awkwardly on too-tall stilettos out of his way and takes a seat at the bar where Yuta is currently tending. He reaches over it to pour himself a drink and appears to contemplate whether just to drink straight from the bottle before he sighs dramatically in Yuta’s direction.

"I’ve danced for two bachelorette parties back to back tonight," he says to explain his desire for straight vodka. "There was _a lot_ of hollering. My ears hurt from the noise." 

Yuta retrieves the bottle of vodka from Doyoung's grip. "Is that because they were all booing you?" He asks with a grin.

Doyoung flips Yuta off, which isn't exactly an unusual occurrence in their friendship. Yuta knows that if push ever came to shove, Doyoung would have Yuta's back, just like Yuta would his, but he'd probably be bad mouthing him behind it gleefully - that's just the way they are. Taeyong despairs but he keeps them both around because the regulars love them both, and because he's soft at heart.

"They would never," Doyoung says, accepting the shot glass that Yuta slides towards him. “They tipped me more than I got paid last weekend, they _loved_ it.”

“Loved it, hated it… There’s a fine line between those emotions,” Yuta says, and maybe it’s the mention of one of those emotions that makes Doyoung take the shot of vodka right at that moment.

After he sets the shot glass back down on the bar, Doyoung clears his throat and says, "I was wondering if you might have heard from Jaehyun lately.”

He isn’t exactly subtle. 

“What is it to you whether I hear from Jaehyun?” He asks, thought he knows exactly why, and he doesn’t think it a coincidence that Doyoung needed the shot of liquor before he broached the subject of their friend and ex-colleague.

“You know what, it’s fine, I’ll ask someone else.” Doyoung crosses his arms. “I’ll ask Taeyong, or Johnny. He’ll know something, he just never gossips.”

Yuta rolls his eyes. Doyoung’s obsession with Jaehyun’s exact movements would be embarrassing if Yuta didn’t know it was mutual. The two of them had started at the club around the same time and had simmered in sexual tension and something akin to affection for almost a year, until everyone was certain they would become a couple.

And then Jaehyun had announced that he was leaving town. He had handed in his two weeks notice, found someone to rent his apartment almost right away, and then he was gone. Yuta had caught Doyoung in an empty private room with red, puffy eyes the night after, and for the first time in their friendship, he hadn’t roasted him for it.

"Actually, I _might_ have heard from him, yeah.” Yuta acts as though this has just suddenly popped into his head. “Yep, I think he called me a few days ago.”

Doyoung pouts and Yuta finds it awfully pathetic looking. “And did he mention… Anyone in particular?” He looks so hopeful it’s almost funny.

Yuta wants to say no, but it’s technically not true, even if Jaehyun hadn’t said Doyoung’s name. “He mentioned missing someone more than he thought he would, but I think he might have just been talking about me,” Yuta says, but he’d known exactly who Jaehyun was referring to when they’d spoken a few nights earlier. “I can’t think of anyone else around here who he would miss.”

Doyoung says, “Shut up,” but his heart isn’t in the insult. In fact, he looks a thousand times less worn out than he had done five minutes earlier, and while Yuta would like to think that it’s all down to the power of vodka, it’s more likely down to the power of love.

Yuta tries not to smile at the sight of the giddy look in Doyoung’s eyes. “I think that maybe he regrets leaving that person behind,” Yuta says, and that’s enough for Doyoung, who breaks out into the happiest smile that Yuta might have ever witnessed. It’s quite cute, not that he’ll ever tell Doyoung. “You’re both idiots,” he adds and pours Doyoung another shot of vodka which sloshes over the glass when Doyoung picks it up.

Jaehyun will be back in the city before the year ends, Yuta is sure of it, and when he does return, Yuta hopes that one of the two of them might actually get their head out of their ass and confess to the other.

If not, he thinks, he might just have to do it for them.

 

\--

 

Yuta catches up with Sicheng again three nights later as he passes by the office to pick up his wages.

“To your first week!” Yuta throws up his closed fist in a fighting gesture and smiles. “Enjoyed it?”

“I’m so relieved.” Sicheng is bouncing on his feet. “It was-- it was really fun, actually. I’ve never made this much money in one week of any job. Actually, I don’t think I’ve made this much in less than two months before.”

Yuta laughs and says, “You can tell you’re a student. By the way, Taeyong is really glad he hired you.”

Sicheng’s mouth struggles to hold back a smile, which is adorable. “He is?”

“Of course, he is. You’re putting me to shame as an employee, so I _should_ be mad at you, but honestly, I’m glad he hired you too,” Yuta says and nods towards the envelope of cash in Sicheng’s hand quickly before he accidentally professes his undying lust. “What are you going to spend your wages on?”

Sicheng says, “Paying my rent, and then I’m going to buy a giant ice-cream. And maybe some manga.” He grins. “I really have never been paid this much.”

“I believe you.” Yuta laughs. It’s nice seeing someone this happy, especially with how much moping around Doyoung has been doing since Jaehyun moved away. “Ah, you’re so cute,” he says and secretly hopes it affects Sicheng the way that every word out of Sicheng’s mouth affects him.

Sicheng calls his name as he crosses the carpark to head to the bus-stop later that night. It's a little after two and Yuta is sleepy, but happy to have his wages in his pocket.

“I wanted to say thank you,” Sicheng calls when Yuta stops in his tracks and turns around. Sicheng hurries towards him, his coat zipped up to his chin, big faux-fur hood around his ears. Sicheng's eyes are still lined with kohl, smudged and alluring, and the tip of his nose is pink with the sudden cold. Yuta wants to kiss it.

“For what?” he asks, when Sicheng catches up.

“For being nice to me.” Sicheng smiles. “I just wanted to say-- I feel really welcomed here and a lot of that is down to you.”

Yuta’s stomach does the kind of flips he hasn’t felt since he was thirteen and a boy in the year above him at school had told him he was cool. “It’s nothing,” he says, playing nonchalant even though he wants to spin in circles. “Really. Anytime you need something I’ll be here."

"I feel like I've made a friend already," Sicheng grins, and it's nice, but Yuta can't deny that the word friend leaves a heavy feeling in his chest that feels like disappointment. 

On the bus ride home Yuta rests his head against the window and contemplates texting Jaehyun to let him know that Doyoung has been asking about him. He'll do so tomorrow, he decides, and then goes back to thinking about what it might be like to kiss Sicheng's cold nose.


	2. too pure for this world

Doyoung lines up three shot glasses along the bar and looks at Yuta suspiciously, all narrowed eyes and pursed lips. “Why do you look so pleased with yourself?” he asks.

Yuta waits for him to pour a shot. “Because you're tending bar tonight & I'm working the stage.” He gives his friend the best shit-eating grin he can manage.

Doyoung doesn’t look convinced with his answer. He takes the first shot himself before Yuta can pick up the glass. 

Taeil pipes up from the stool next to Yuta. “He told me it’s because the new dancer was nice to him,” he says. 

Yuta pushes him by the shoulder, feigning anger, and to his credit Taeil actually manages to look a little wounded by it, though he clearly isn’t. “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” Taeil adds and he waits for Doyoung to pour him a drink too.

“Maybe, but you would be exactly the same,” Yuta replies, because Taeil is probably the only other one of them that Yuta reckons would understand what he’s going through. “If you worked with him like we do, you’d get it, I promise you.”

Taeil says, “If I had to work with you two I’d quit.”

Doyoung says, “But then you wouldn’t work with us, so that makes no sense.”

Taeil doesn’t have an answer to this smart comment, so instead he just says, “Have you spoken to Jaehyun lately?” and Yuta laughs happily as Doyoung frowns. 

“He’s busy,” Doyoung says. “And so am I, so you two need to get the hell away from my bar so I can get on with serving some real customers who will pay and tip me properly.”

Taeil smiles sweetly and takes his last shot of free vodka. Yuta refrains from taking another because he can’t risk falling off the stage again during his solo routine. Then Taeyong would  _ definitely  _ know he drinks on the job.

“Don’t be too sad, he’ll come back for you.” Yuta smiles at Doyoung. “Probably.” He pushes his stool away from the bar and gets down, Taeil doing the same next to him. 

“Do you have time for food before you’re on stage?” Taeil asks him. They don’t get to hang out with him much since he left the club to actually use his accounting degree to make a living, but at least it means that Yuta can pretend he has a rich boyfriend who wears a suit when they go out to eat together. 

Taeil would never  _ actually _ date him in a million years, though, because he has common sense (his words) and, anyway, he likes taller guys with facial hair and mortgages (not his words, but going by his dating history, Yuta has determined that this is Taeil’s type, and he’s never argued otherwise). Yuta can hardly afford his rent, never mind even the thought of buying his own place, and he’s never much suited stubble, plus he doesn’t date his friends anyway. They know him and his insecurities too well, and none of them have ever made him want to bend over backwards (literally) in the way that Sicheng does.

“If you’re paying, I definitely have time for food.” Yuta rubs his hands together and thinks about barbeque pork ribs. 

“I’ve paid the last three times we’ve had dinner,” Taeil says. “And Doyoung here owes me money too from that time we all got drunk in the mall and he got me to buy him a jacket.”

Doyoung pretends he can’t hear their conversation.

“So…” Yuta pauses. “Are you saying that you won’t buy your favourite dongsaeng dinner?”

“You are  _ not  _ my favourite.” Taeil rolls his eyes. “And I’m not buying you dinner.” 

Yuta frowns, but he’s hungry, so he’s going to follow Taeil out of the club and into the street, anyway, and then Taeil is going to pay for everything they eat, and they both know it. He’s a good friend.

“Whatever, I’m going to make lots of money in tips tonight, so I can afford my own dinner.” He grins as he follows Taeil outside and across the street to their usual haunt - a family run restaurant with neon signs in the windows and the best ribs in town. “And then hopefully Sicheng is going to fall deeply and madly in love with me.”

 

\--

 

Yuta doesn’t manage to make Sicheng fall deeply in love with him, because Sicheng doesn’t actually stick around after his stage long enough to make conversation. 

Yuta is blotting his lips when Sicheng rushes past, headphones in, eyes focused on his locker. He opens the locker door so quickly that his backpack almost falls out of it and on top of him.

“Careful, you’ll hurt yourself.” Yuta reaches out to steady him, make-up forgotten.

“I’m okay!” Sicheng throws his back-pack over his shoulder. “Sorry, hyung. I’m in a rush.” He gives Yuta an apologetic smile and ducks his head, and then he turns and leaves the dressing room without so much as a goodbye.

Yuta stares at his reflection in the mirror, the lights around it casting him in a yellow glow, and scrunches his mouth up into a petulant frown. “That went well,” he mutters to himself, his ego fragile and his heart beating too fast. 

It’s not that he thinks that he deserves more of Sicheng’s attention - that isn’t it at all. Sicheng can ignore him as much he likes. Sicheng owes nothing to Yuta, he knows that It’s just -- Yuta hasn’t felt like this in a long time - this hopeful, light, ticklish feeling inside of his chest that makes him want to envelope Sicheng in a long hug, and it sucks that his stupid, reckless, heart has chosen the object of its affections to be someone who is, quite frankly, too good for him anyway.  

He knows this is true because Buzzfeed tells him the same when he’s hanging out in the lounge after the club has closed, legs curled up under him on a chair as Taeyong sweeps around them. 

“Too good for this world - a pure,  _ pure  _ cinnamon roll,” he reads aloud.

Johnny looks up from the book he’s reading across the room. “What?”

“That’s what this Buzzfeed quiz says. It says that the object of my affections is a pure cinnamon roll,” Yuta says. “And I agree, obviously.”

“You don’t really know anything about Sicheng,” Johnny replies. “He might be the devil incarnate for all you know.”

“He is  _ clearly _ not the devil incarnate,” Yuta scoffs. “That role is taken by Doyoung, anyway.”

Doyoung flicks his middle finger up in his direction from where he’s drying glasses at the bar, but he doesn’t argue. “Buzzfeed is probably correct on this one,” he says. “You missed a treat by going for dinner with Taeil-hyung last night. Sicheng came to the bar before he went on stage last night and he just sat there, all innocent, practising his wink, for five whole minutes.”

Yuta puts down his phone. This sounds interesting. “Practising his what?”

“I told him that if you time it well, a perfectly executed wink to the crowd can result in a ton of tips and private bookings,” Doyoung explains. “The key is in making sure that every member of the audience think the wink was directed at them and only them.”

Johnny murmurs in agreement. “It’s the same with the lip-bite,” he says. “Works a fucking treat every time.”

Doyoung scoffs. “What lip-bite?” he asks.

“This one.” Johnny proceeds to present to them his killer move. 

Doyoung and Yuta don’t argue with him about its hotness, because he would know they were lying, and despite the natural rivalry between the dancers, they would never drag each other’s routines: the routines are  _ sacred _ . 

“Did you see it, Tae?” Doyoung calls their boss over and urges Johnny to repeat his performance. “Do it again, go on.”

Yuta notices Taeyong’s ears go red as he continues cleaning, pretending to stay uninterested in what’s going on, and Yuta on makes a note to tease him about it later.

“I need to see Sicheng’s wink in action now. I  _ need  _ to.” Yuta sighs. “I bet it’s adorable. Ah, I’m calling him Winko from now on! Do you think he’ll like it?”

“No,” Doyoung and Johnny say in unison. 

Taeyong clears his throat. “You know what  _ I’d _ like?” he says. “I’d like it if all of you actually helped me clean this place up if you’re not going home after you finish your shifts.”

“Will we get overtime pay if we help?” Yuta asks. He puts down his phone, Buzzfeed quizzes long forgotten.

Taeyong huffs. “How about if you help, I won’t fire you?” he suggests, and as much as Yuta wants to argue, it seems like a very fair trade.

 

\--

 

Yuta tries to bring up Taeyong’s blushes over the way that Johnny had turned his moves on him on more than one occasion over the next week, but he is rebuffed by him every time with reminders that he needs to get back to work if he wants a paycheck. 

Yuta doesn’t actually mind though, because he knows that the wait will be worth it if he can just get Taeyong to admit that he has a crush. Taeyong has a wise head on his shoulders, but he’s also human and very much single and, as Doyoung agrees, getting laid would do him the world of good. 

“Speaking of sex,” Yuta says, as Doyoung shrugs on his tuxedo jacket ready for his performance. “Have you actually dated anyone since Jaehyun left town?”

Doyoung says, “Have you?”

“That’s irrelevant,” Yuta points out. “Since I’m not the one in love with him.”

Doyoung frowns. “Who said I’m in-- ugh, whatever. My question still stands,” he says. “Sicheng isn’t exactly looking very interested in having you pecking at his pretty heels. Maybe you should be focusing on getting yourself laid elsewhere.”

“This isn’t just about getting laid.” Yuta messes his hair up perfectly, turning in the mirror to make sure it’s exactly how it need to look. Just because he’s doing the oiled up mechanic routine tonight doesn’t mean he can’t make sure his costume is exactly on point. 

Doyoung doesn’t look convinced. “Then what is it?” 

“Okay, it isn’t _ just  _ about getting laid.”

Doyoung scoffs. “If you say so,” he replies, reaching across the counter to steal some of Yuta’s hair-clay. He runs his fingers through his hair until it’s flawlessly slicked back and picks up the leather gloves sitting on the counter in front of them, sliding his fake gun into the holster at his hip before he puts them on. 

“You should take a selfie before you go on stage,” Yuta tells him before he leaves the dressing room. “Jaehyun was always a sucker for your sexy assassin routine.”

(Doyoung’s instagram is updated within three minutes).

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let's all picture doyoung in his sexy assassin get up


	3. bitterness

When Yuta gets off-stage, he heads straight to the dressing room, where he pulls out his phone to a reminder from his mother that she and his father are visiting him at the end of the month. As he changes into jeans and a loose shirt, Yuta mentally prepares a shopping list of groceries and practical things like washing up soap and fresh towels to buy before his parents arrive in town, lest they take one look at his place and force him onto a plane back home.

The approaching footsteps are so soft that he hardly notices Sicheng until he’s practically halfway into the room, hands in his pockets. “Uh, Yuta-hyung?” he says. Yuta wonders if he's been waiting there for a while.

Yuta smiles. “Hey,” he says. “Sorry, I was just writing a shopping list.”

Sicheng’s brow furrows.

“In my mind. I was writing a shopping list in my mind,” Yuta clarifies and Sicheng looks less confused, if a little dumbfounded.

“I just wanted to say sorry that I was in a rush the other night when you tried to speak to me.” He pulls a face, a little awkward, a little embarrassed. “I ran out because I was late for a-- uh, to meet someone.” He blushes and it’s cute, but then again Sicheng might be about to announce that he has a significant other and break Yuta’s heart into a million little pieces, which ruins the moment a little.

“Anyone special?” Yuta asks, as casually as he can muster. He hopes his face isn’t giving away the desperate way he is trying to remain totally composed.

Sicheng shakes his head. “I shouldn't have bothered turning up. It was such a boring date, we had practically nothing in common.” He frowns. “And _then_ I mentioned what I do for my part-time job.”

“Ah. What happened?”

“He just acted gross about it,” Sicheng says, nose wrinkled up. “Assumed I was going to put out on the first date.”

“People assume that about me too,” Yuta replies. “Although, they have never been wrong about it yet… Still, that’s such a dumb thing for him to assume. Not everyone who works here is as easy as me.”

Sicheng laughs, and the sound is like magic. “You’re really funny.”

“I wish I was joking.” Yuta smiles at him. “I take it you’re not going to see him again? The gross guy?”

Sicheng shakes his head, resolute in his distaste. “Definitely not,” he says, unbuttoning his coat and hanging it up beside the lockers. His nose is still pink, he’s obviously just come in from the cold. Yuta wonders what time he’s on stage and whether he can get away with watching the performance without Taeyong realising that he’s shirking on the extra bartending shift he agreed to take on for the rest of the night. Doyoung is on his night off, probably at home, listening to ballads and wondering what Jaehyun is doing four hours away, and Yuta had offered to cover for him after he’d performed - it works out well, sometimes, performing and tending bar in the same night: if he can’t lure in tips with his hips, he can at least lure them in with alcohol later on.

Sicheng prepares for his routine quietly, the oversized neck of his sweater sloping to the side and showing off the perfect expanse of tanned skin over his left collarbone. Yuta thinks about what it would be like to bite down there, what Sicheng’s skin might taste like after he finishes performing: salty with perspiration, sticky and hot. Yuta is mesmerised, sitting at the counter as he watches the dancer humming behind him in the long mirror that fills the wall. His shopping list is long forgotten and in its place is a list of places he would like to kiss his new friend.

“Aren’t you meant to be upstairs now?” Sicheng asks, as he closes his eyes and begins rolling his neck, chin tilted upwards. Yuta adds right underneath the chin as another place he’d like to put his lips. “Yuta-hyung?”

“Erm…” Yuta manages to tear his eyes away from Sicheng and checks the time on his phone. “Oh fuck, I should have been behind the bar fifteen minutes ago.” He stands up, gathering his things together and shoving them into his locker, not bothering to lock it behind him. No one wants to steal his old phone and his old sneakers, at least they never have before, and he needs to make it to the floor before Taeyong realises he isn't there.

“I’ll see you later,” he says, all hope and no shame, as he rushes towards the door.

“I hope so,” Sicheng replies, and he’s smiling beautifully when Yuta turns back to face him from the doorway. “It’s nice to talk to someone who doesn’t have ulterior motives after the other night.”

Yuta laughs feebly. “How do you know I don’t?”

“You’re funny, hyung, really.” Sicheng quips, and he looks like he means it. Yuta thinks about his words as he heads up to the bar, wonders whether he should be reading into them. Whether, maybe, Sicheng is making fun of him, or warning him to not dare even think about the prospect of being anything other than friends. He replays the scene again and again, as he serves up tequila shots, and Cosmos, rounds of soju and one Arnold Palmer, but he can’t quite decide whether there was anything behind what Sicheng had said at all.

Yuta makes a decent amount in tips that night, and when the bar closes and he heads to his locker to grab his stuff, he takes a detour to the management office, where he tells Taeyong to go home and sleep. "You have circles under your eyes," he tells him. "Johnny won't think you're cute if you don't rest, you know."

"He doesn't--" Taeyong blushes. "And anyway I don't care if he does," he mumbles, but he does put his computer into stand-by mode and follow Yuta towards the exit.

 

\--

 

It’s almost a week later, and Yuta follows the sounds of classical music down to one of the empty private rooms, where he finds Sicheng practicing by himself on the small stage at the back of the room.

Yuta can’t wolf-whistle so when the track ends and the room is engulfed in silence, he whoops and claps loudly from the doorway.

Sicheng looks up so quickly his face is a blur. He’s pink cheeked and startled, and it’s adorable. “I didn’t realise anyone was here,” he says, breath short, eyes wide.

“I'm sorry.” Yuta grins, he can't help it, happiness taking over his face. “I was just passing and I heard something going on” he lies. There is no way Sicheng believes him because there technically isn’t anywhere to pass - this is the room at the end of the hallway and someone could only end up there if they meant to.

They both know that Yuta meant to, but Sicheng doesn’t say anything about it, thank goodness. “Okay,” he says, hands on his hips as he catches his breath. "Sorry if my music was too loud. The routine isn't finished," he adds, quickly. "If it looked bad."

“Bad? The routine is-- well, it is definitely _something_ ,” Yuta tells him. Body rolls set to classical music might be the best combination Yuta has ever witnessed, and he's seen some pretty fucking amazing things in his twenty three years alive. “I’d tip you everything I had if, you know, any cash at all on me.”

Sicheng tips his head to the side and a bead of sweat drips from his hair onto his face. It's mesmerising. “Really?”

“Yep.” Yuta can’t stop smiling. His cheeks hurt, but in a good way. In the way that means everything is fucking fantastic. “I could make you a drink upstairs, though? You’re not officially on the clock right now, so it would be okay.”

Sicheng worries his bottom lip between his teeth and pushes his damp hair back. “I don’t know if I should,” he says. “I need to shower and…”

“I have a new recipe, you’d really be doing me a favour by trying it out.” Yuta says. And maybe he sounds a bit desperate, and maybe he’s regretting making his presence in the room known. Sicheng looks torn between polite agreement and running away, and Yuta does not feel good about it.

Finally, Sicheng shakes his head. He looks remorseful, but stubborn. There is a tenacity to him that makes Yuta’s skin tingle.  “No, I shouldn’t. I have to practise more. I’m sorry.” He looks straight at him, a half-sad smile on his lips - something like pity, maybe - and Yuta feels so awkward it physically hurts. "Maybe-- maybe another time?" 

“Another time, then.” Yuta smiles, and then he turns on his heels and makes his way back up to the main floor, to the bar and the people and the noise, as fast as he can.

The drink he makes himself tastes bitter and Yuta feels bitter too.

 

\--

 

Jaehyun sends him an email that Yuta picks up two days after it landed in his inbox. “Who even sends emails anymore?” he says to Taeyong, sitting on the edge of his desk as Taeyong works through finances. “What year is it?”

“I send emails,” Taeyong points out. “I email all of you company updates, because you stopped picking up your actual mail years ago.”

“Yeah, we don’t read those emails.” Yuta looks up. “Although… I bet Sicheng does, since he’s teachers pet and all. He wouldn’t even come and have a-- uh, nevermind.” He grabs a biro and doodles aimlessly on a piece of scrap paper, writes the name _Winko_ in cursive over and over and tries not to feel dumb.

Taeyong looks away from his laptop. “A what?”

“Nothing,” Yuta replies. Taeyong probably knows that he drinks during work, but that doesn’t mean Yuta will ever verbalise it. “Anyway, I think Jaehyun is homesick. There was a whole paragraph in his email that complained about the way the water tastes in his apartment block. You’d think he was on another continent, not just in another city. And he asked about Doyoung, _again_.”

“I really thought they were going to make it official back then,” Taeyong says, almost wistful. He really does think of them all as a family, Yuta can tell. It’s what makes him such a great person to work for. “Doyoung is a different person without him.”

Yuta laughs. “In what way?” He asks, and adds three doodled hearts to the corner of the page.

“Just-- a bit lost.” Taeyong shrugs. “Something’s just not quite right when they’re apart.”

“Yeah. They were really good together.” Yuta realises that the paper he’s been doodling on is in fact the weekly time-sheet. He shuffles it underneath the files on Taeyong’s desk and hope he never ever finds it.

“I saw that,” Taeyong says without even looking away from his expenses spreadsheet. If it came out that Taeyong had eyes in the back of his head, Yuta wouldn’t be at all surprised.

“If I stay late and clean out the back of the bar can you pretend that you didn’t see it?” he asks, and to his relief, Taeyong agrees.

 

\--

 

Doyoung says, “What do you think this means?” and thrusts his phone under Yuta’s nose. Yuta flinches away, surprised by the sudden attack when he's trying to perfect a new cocktail.

“Take it and read the comment,” Doyoung prompts him, staring at him until he takes the phone from his friend’s grasp. “Read the comment.”

Yuta looks at Doyoung’s phone, the screen showing an instagram post: a photo of a man in a navy blue shirt, looking away from the camera. Yuta doesn’t recognise the person. He scrolls down to the comment underneath, posted by user Y00n@h. Yuta had forgotten how 2001 Jaehyun’s online presence always seems to be.

He reads the comment aloud. “It says, _you look cool, hyung_.”

Doyoung says, “And?”

“And there’s a thumbs up emoji.”

“So?” Doyoung leans over the bar and snatches his phone back. “What does it mean?”

“Doyoung, have you knocked your head?” Yuta asks. “It says, _you look cool._ You know what those words mean in that order.”

“No--no, I can _read_ it, asshole. I just meant… “ He sighs, loud and aggressive and Yuta almost wants to hug him. “Whatever.”

Yuta can’t help but laugh. “If you’re wondering if Jaehyun and this unknown guy are flirting, I’d say no. He comments on my photos like that too. Actually he puts heart emojis on my selfies.”

Doyoung ponders this. His hair is perfectly styled, his smoky eye just the right side of fuck-me-now. He’s due on stage in fifteen minutes and Yuta knows there’s a whole twenty first birthday party in just waiting to watch him, wallets at the ready, and yet he looks so far away from sexy it’s almost impressive. “He didn’t even _like_ my last selfie,” he sighs, the black, structured-shoulder blazer he is wearing the only thing stopping him from deflating into himself like an old balloon.

Yuta pours him a shot, checking the floor for their manager before he pushes it across the bar and into Doyoung’s waiting hand. “That’s because he was probably busy jerking off to it.”

“You think? That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in forever,” Doyoung looks a little brighter. “It was a good one, wasn’t it?”

“He’s pining for you with his hand on his cock, I just know it." Yuta humours his friend, partly because he doesn’t want the birthday party to get a sad lap dance and partly because it’s probably true if Jaehyun’s last email - full of layered questions about Doyoung - was anything to go by.

By the time Doyoung heads backstage, there is a smirk on his face and a glint to his eye that suggests he’s going to drive the crowd wild, even if he will be pretending they’re Jung Jaehyun.

 

 


	4. baby boy

Yuta’s parents arrange to fly over and visit him for a long weekend. He takes three days vacation and it feels strange not to be in work. He hasn’t taken vacation in six months - he likes working, or getting away with not working where his bartending shifts are concerned. Most of his friends work at the club and since Taeil got his own place, he gets bored being on his own in his apartment, so, while he jokes about Taeyong living at the club, he gets it: it’s truly a second home to all of them. But his parents haven’t seen him in almost a year and, for all their misgivings, Yuta does miss them, so their visit is long overdue.

His parents come to town and lecture him about going to grad school or finding what they call a career and, even though he knows they’re well meaning and that they love him in their own, if slightly disapproving way, he’s glad when they leave and he can get back to doing what he enjoys: performing, vodka and making fun of Doyoung.

(Not necessarily in that order.)

Yuta waves his parents off at the airport in early evening, takes a rush-hour bus through gridlocked traffic, and arrives at work with only fifteen minutes to spare before he’s due on stage. Johnny is in the dressing room, his feet up on Yuta’s usual chair when he walks in. He doesn't see the face that Yuta makes, too busy reading a tattered paperback. “When are you on?” Yuta asks him. He waits for Johnny to move his feet so he can sit down.

Johnny looks up from his book. He doesn't move his feet. “After you. And then I’m going home to bed, so _no_ I won’t help you convince Taeyong to take a week off so we can perform with fire or whatever shit you and Doyoung come up with that’s against safety regulations.”

“That was one time,” Yuta points out. “And it was Jaehyun’s suggestion. Although I think he was just trying to impress Doyoung and didn’t think we’d actually run with it.”

“No wonder that boy left town, he probably had a nervous breakdown,” Johnny mutters. He finally moves, and Yuta sits down next to him, turning to the mirror to check he isn't too flushed from his rush across town. “It’s a wonder Tae didn’t fire you back then, he puts up with so much,” Johnny adds.

Yuta hums a response. “He does. He’s not had a day off in almost a year.” Yuta pulls his makeup pouch out of his bag and sets it down. He takes out his contouring brushes and lines them up on the counter in a neat line. They're old, from when he first started performing, and he should probably buy new ones, but it's difficult to let go of them. He likes to keep things close for a long time - friends, belongings, all the same. He also likes bringing up Taeyong around Johnny - it’s like a science experiment, watching him pretend with so much might not to care about their boss while simultaneously talking non-stop about him. And today is no different.

“He does need to relax,” Johnny agrees. His book is in his lap now, long forgotten. “I caught him talking to himself in the office last night about income and taxes. And he looked at me like _I_ was crazy when I interrupted him.”

Yuta laughs. Taeyong is the best boss he has ever had, and he is pretty damn proud of him. They all are. “You should have sex with him,” Yuta suggests. “Might loosen him up. I know you want to.”

Johnny Seo actually _blushes_. “Fuck you,” he says. When he picks up his book again, it’s upside down, but Yuta pretends not to notice. He has his own vice, and his vice is beautiful and adorable and his vice seems to be completely immune to his charms.

Yuta clears his throat and then pauses for a second as he decides whether he’s being too blatantly obvious right now or not and finally decides he doesn't care either way. “So… When’s Sicheng performing tonight?”

Johnny is still pretending to read his upside down book. “He finished ten minutes ago,” he says. “He came in here silently, put on that big coat with the fluffy hood he wears and left. I assume that he’s gone home.”

Yuta’s throat constricts. Maybe he’s dying. “Oh.”

“Why?” Johnny looks up now, raising an eyebrow. “Oh, did he tell you he was onstage in the second half of the night?” He grins.

“No,” Yuta retorts, although he is sure he’d overheard Sicheng saying he was working the last and not the first act all of this week in the dressing room the weekend before. “I’m just making conversation,” he lies.

He feels an inexplicable sadness at sicheng not being in the building, but then he pictures him wrapped up in his giant fluffy hood and swoons a little at the mental picture.

Johnny just turns his book up the right way and gets back to reading, and even though there is the faintest hint of a smug grin tugging at his lips, Yuta guesses it’s well deserved.

He’s well and truly, head over heels in love - or if not love, _something_ at least, and he’s screwed.

 

\--

 

It isn’t long before Sicheng is no longer the newest dancer at the club.

Yukhei is loud, and big, and exuberant, and he spends most of his warm up time watching himself in the mirror while he gyrates. He has muscles on top of muscles, he can flex his pecs obscenely, and as he does it, Sicheng sits next to Yuta at the front of the stage and watches him with an amused smile.

When he finishes his rehearsal he bows dramatically in their direction and then stands up tall, chin jutted out proudly. Taeyong has an eye for hiring dancers that will definitely get people off, which Yuta doesn’t understand since Taeyong appears to have become a virginal maiden from an old novel and can barely look Johnny in the eye these days. Yuta claps and Yukhei shouts, “You know what I mean?” at them both. Yuta doesn’t, but he shouts it back because the enthusiasm is catching.

Sicheng applauds too, his tank top sliding off one shoulder as he claps his hands, and Yuta tries to resist the urge to slip it back up into place, but he can’t manage to, the temptation to touch is too much. He pushes Sicheng's sleeve up onto his shoulder and then pulls back and folds both of his hands in his lap. He feels weirdly shy, which is unlike him, but Sicheng does weird things to him, so he isn't much surprised. 

“Thank you.” Sicheng smiles at him, and Yuta pretends that he isn’t melting inside. He turns his attention back to Yukhei. “So, come on, how do you get a chest like that?” he asks.

Yukhei shrugs and grins at them. “I was born with it,” he says, which makes no sense and Yuta thinks that Yukhei probably knows this.

Yuta says, “You had _that_ body as a small, newborn, baby? The one you have now, twenty years later?”

Yukhei laughs. “I’ve also spent a lot of time in the gym in the last year,” he says. “Actually, where I last worked we had to prove we’d been working out or we’d get our tips taken off us.”

Sicheng pulls a face. “That doesn’t seem right. Don’t worry, Taeyong-hyung would never do anything like that, would he?” He turns to Yuta for approval and Yuta shakes his head vehemently.

“Taeyong take our tips? Well, he _does_ threaten me with it a lot, but only when I deserve it. He’d never actually do it, which is lucky because the tips here are great."

“They really are,” Sicheng says. “I bought new airbuds with my tips last week so I can practise my routine to the music at night without waking up my neighbours.” He smiles, pride evident in the deep curve of his mouth. "Best idea I have had since--"

Yukehi suggests, "Since applying to work here?" and Sicheng agrees happily.

“You are so clever, Winko," Yuta tells him, the nickname slipping out before he can catch himself. 

Yukhei looks confused. "Winko?” he repeats and Yuta wonders if he can get out of this conversation with at least a hint of his own self-respect. Before he can think up an answer, Sicheng is shrugging. "I have no idea what he's talking about either," he quips. “Come on Yukhei, I’ll show you around.”

Yuta sits at the edge of the stage by himself until Doyoung appears in the curtains and says, "You look pathetic, whats up?"

"I called him Winko." He sighs. "To his face. In front of the new recruit."

Doyoung snorts. He looks half pleased and half sorry. "You idiot. Remind me, why are we friends?"

"Don't act like you didn't spend all of last night stalking Jaehyun's instagram." Yuta scowls as he gets up and follows Doyoung backstage.

"I didn't spend all night doing that," Doyoung retorts as they make their way back to the dressing rooms to get ready for opening. He pauses as they reach the door and grins. "...I watched three episodes of the Kardashian's too."

 

\--

 

Johnny corners Yuta on the stairs between the main floor and the private rooms downstairs at the start of the next night and says, “I have a proposition for you."

Yuta hopes Johnny isn't going to ask him to suck his dick, because he'd probably do it just out of curiosity and then have to avoid him awkwardly for a month like he did with Taeil that time. 

"Stop looking at me like that." Johnny frowns. "I’ll do the private session with that bachelorette party for you at the weekend if you’ll pick up my wages for me tonight. Sound good?”

“It’s tempting, I rarely feel like entertaining fifteen women drunk on wine coolers, but those events tip _so_ well, I don’t mind working it really... “ Yuta pauses. "Why do you need someone to go to the office for you, anyway?" He has a fair idea of why, but it's no fun not to hear Johnny say it. 

Johnny doesn't budge, though. Instead he just repeats, "Get my wages for me," in a steady voice. “Please, Yuta.”

Yuta tries not to laugh, because laughing at Johnny rarely ends well. “Anyone would think you were avoiding Taeyong.”

“I’m not avoiding Taeyong." Johnny runs a hand through his hair - damp from dancing or from the shower, Yuta doesn't know. He huffs out a breath, brow pulled together in a worried line. "It’s just-- it’s complicated. You know it’s complicated between us. _I know_ that you know it’s complicated, don't pretend to be oblivious.”

“It’s not complicated at all," Yuta points out. "You want to bone him, and he wants to be boned by--.”

“If you don’t pick up my wages, I’ll…” Johnny cuts in. He looks almost desperate, but then his face softens, and he’s almost cherubic as he says. “Yuta, if you’re my friend, you’ll _please_ pick up my wages. Pretty please." Yuta considers this a win.

"Consider it done," he says. He's feeling benevolent. Sicheng had waved him hello from across the stage earlier, even if he had looked away straight afterwards, and Yuta is going to cling onto the giddy feeling of joy it had given him for as long as he can. "But only this once!"

It's funny, Yuta thinks, that his friends can be so obtuse and so intelligent at the same time. Maybe he hadn't considered it before, but now Taeyong and Johnny together makes total sense to him. They could be great together, but Yuta guesses they need to figure this out for themselves.

For now, at least, he decides, it's fun to see them squirm. 

 

\--

 

The office door is open when Yuta gets to the end of the corridor. Taeyong is working at his laptop as he hums along to the song playing over the radio behind him. When Yuta enters, Taeyong immediately opens the drawer next to him and rustles around, producing a white envelope with Yuta's name on it and handing it to him with a smile. "Here you go."

Yuta takes his pay. “Can I sign out Johnny’s paycheck too?” he asks. "He can't come down here himself."

“Why? Is he okay?" Taeyong's face falls and Yuta makes a note to tell Johnny about the genuine concern etched into their manager's features at the thought of him being hurt. 

“He's okay." Yuta grins. "I just don’t think he trusts himself alone with you in this private room since you two are infatuated with each other or something.”

Taeyong's concern turns to flustered panic. “What?”

“You know, Taeyongie. If you two gave each other the time of day, you’d realise that this weird crush could be an actual _sex_ thing. Or even - god forbid - romance.”

“Romance? With Johnny?" Taeyong shakes his head. "With-- I’m his _manager_.”

“This isn’t the Presidential Office. I don't think anyone would be particularly scandalised.” Yuta draws out the last word and raises his eyebrows. 

“I know, but it's still my business," Taeying replies, looking a little offended. "My _baby_.”

“And you could be Johnny’s baby. His baby boy!”

Taeyong closes his eyes, composing himself internally, whilst his flushed cheeks betray him. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because I’m single. Doyoung and Jaehyun are pathetic _and_ single, despite themselves. Even _Taeil_ is single right now, and he’s got the most going for him out of everyone we know.” He pauses. “Actually, if you don’t like Johnny, maybe I’ll set Taeil up with him instead.”

"I’ll-- I'll think about it,” Taeyong hisses. “Now, can you leave me alone or we can sit here and work out how much of your wages I need to dock.”

“For what?” 

“I’m sure I’ll think of something." Taeyong's empty threat is almost believable this time as he opens the drawer to take out a second envelope and hand it over. "Here, take Johnny's pay as well and leave me in peace."

“I’m going. Text me when you’re home so I know you haven’t slept here again,” Yuta says, because for as much as Taeyong is reluctant to admit it, he really does need to relax more. He works too hard, and Yuta thinks, if he isn't going to sleep with Johnny, he should at least _sleep_. Taeyong mumbles something in response that Yuta can't quite hear, but he still waves Yuta out of the office with a fond smile anyway.

 

\--

 

Sicheng is in the dressing room when Yuta pops in to slip Johnny's paycheque into the gap in his locker door ready for him to retrieve the next night. “Your routine was good tonight, Sicheng," Yuta tells him.

Sicheng looks up from his coffee - or is it hot chocolate? - and frowns. “What? You saw it?”

“No, but that’s what I would be saying if I had." Yuta shrugs, smiling. "Your routines are always great. Did you get a lot of tips?”

Sicheng nods at him, watching him in the mirror.

“Good.” Yuta opens his own locker and takes out his sweater and jeans to get changed into for the bus journey home. He pulls off his tank top as seductively as is possible considering he's tired and he cricked his neck earlier doing an almost-naked limbo. He tries to watch Sicheng's reaction out of the corner of his eye, but Sicheng is tapping at his phone, eyes focused on the task in hand and nowhere near the reflection of Yuta's impressively slim waist.

Yuta puts on his sweater, rolling it down over his stomach slowly, wondering if Sicheng will ever look up at him again. He doesn't. “I'm going to hang out upstairs for a while and annoy Doyoung before I go home. Stop by the second floor bar before you leave, I’ll make you your favourite," he says as he gives up on seduction and sits down on the bench in front of his locker to change into his jeans.

Sicheng finally meets his eye, his gaze not even flickering to anywhere near Yuta's bare thighs. It's infuriating. "My favourite what?" he asks.

Yuta doesn’t even miss a beat. “Favourite anything!" He smiles, and Sicheng actually smiles back. "I might do," he says, and then his eyes are straight back to his phone again. Yuta puts on his jeans and accepts that he's being dumb by hanging round, leaving Sicheng to whatever is making him laugh on his phone and heading upstairs to the bar.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 I don't know if anyone is reading this but if so - thank you for being here you absolute cutie!


	5. sugar coma

  

To Yuta's surprise, Sicheng actually visits him at the second floor bar. 

He pours the cocktail he’s been obscenely shaking (which is the way he always shakes his cocktails, because, if he can't do it like that here, he doesn't know where he could) into a tall, frosted, glass and adds a sprig of mint to give it a perfect finishing touch. He sets it up onto the bar with a confident smile. This is one of his favourite things about this part of his job: creating new things. Different things, things that are _his._ Even if they are just alcoholic drinks.

"Go on, try it." He pushes it towards Sicheng. "And be honest if it tastes bad."

Sicheng leans forward and closes his lips around the straw. He lowers his eyes as he takes a sip, and the fan of his eyelashes over his cheeks paired with the perfect black wing painted at the corner of his eyes is nothing less than high art to Yuta. Yuta waits for his response with baited breath, he really hopes it isn't too sweet. He's been working on finding a balance with the sweetness of his tall drinks lately and he doesn't want to put Sicheng into a sugar coma. It's weird, how nervous he feels right now. More nervous than he has done in a long while.

Finally, Sicheng leans back, the straw slipping out of his mouth in a way that Yuta will replay in his mind all night. "It's really good," he says, and he looks sincere about it.

"Enough mint?" Yuta asks. "Not too much sugar?"

Sicheng shakes his head. "Everything seemed right to me." He pauses. "Although, I'm not exactly an expert. I don't-- I don't really drink." He pulls an apologetic face.

"You don't really drink cocktails?" Yuta asks as Sicheng lifts up the glass and takes another drink. "That's why you didn't have a favourite when I asked, then?"

"I guess. I don't really drink  _at all._ " His cheeks are becoming redder and Yuta doesn't think it's just the lighting in the bar.

"Oh." Clearly, a sugar coma should not have been Yuta's main concern when he'd asked Sicheng to try out his new recipe. " _Oh._ You don't have to finish it, you know. I'd have made you something without alcohol."

Sicheng says, "I know. that" He takes another sip. "But it's nice."

"I'm so glad you're off the clock, or Taeyong would kill me." Yuta chuckles. "Hey, chase it with this." He places another glass down in front of his willing taster.

"What is it?" Sicheng stares at the glass as though he's trying to figure out what magical concoction it could hold.

"It's water." Yuta laughs at Sicheng's sudden, disappointed, expression. "Make sure that you drink it all."

Sicheng makes a noncommittal noise and goes back to sipping the cocktail as three men approach the bar. Two of them chatting to each other, but the third is more interested in watching Sicheng. “Are you waiting to be served?” Yuta asks, placing his hands down on the bar and raising his eyebrows accusingly. He probably looks petty right now, but the bar does have a strict policy on bothering the performers when they're offstage, and, anyway, Sicheng is finally giving him the attention he's not-so-secretly been craving, and the stupid, childish, part of him, is annoyed it's being interrupted. 

“No.” The man doesn't even spare a lookat him, still watching Sicheng with a predatory gaze that makes even Yuta's skin crawl, and he's used to over-friendly customers, he's worked here long enough.

“Then move on from the bar,” he says. The man finally turns to look at him, and Yuta stares him down until he finally rolls his eyes and walks away.

Sicheng says, "I didn't know you were a bouncer here too," with no hint of irony in his voice, but he is definitely joking because he smirks when he takes another drink. 

Yuta shrugs. “You shouldn’t let them bother you, Winko."

Sicheng rests his chin on his palm, elbows propped up on the bar. “I think he just wanted to tell me that he likes my performances,” he says, softly.

“He likes more than your performances, I can tell.”

Sicheng looks down with a smile. “I’m fine.”

“I know you are, God do I know you are," Yuta sighs. "Hows the water?"

Before Sicheng can answer, Yukhei appears next to him, a glistening of sweat on his upper arms that might actually be massage oil, and says, “Man, this place is sick. Some guy just asked if he could lick the sweat off of my arms and tipped me all of this.” He holds out a wad of notes proudly, showing it to both Sicheng and Yuta. "Crazy." 

“Did you say yes before he went ahead and did it?” Yuta asks. He realises what that glisten on Yukhei arm is and feels a little ill. “They aren’t allowed to touch us you know. Anyone who touches you without consent is barred for life. _Even_ if they touch you with their tongue. Probably especially if they do that.”

Yukhei nods. “I know that, don’t worry about me hyung.” He turns to Sicheng. “You were right about him.”

Yuta looks between the two. He isn't sure if he wants to know what Sicheng has been saying about him. He knows that he probably hasn't made a great impression on Sicheng, despite all of his best attempts to. He's too beautiful and too cute and Yuta is doomed to fall over his words and stare at him for too long, to be over enthusiastic in his compliments and to feel jealousy in the smallest of things. 

Sicheng smiles at him. “I just told him about how protective you are. About, you know, how you look out for me and stuff."

 _Oh._ Yuta melts a little. "Well, I, uh." He mumbles. "I just..."  

"Can I have a cute nickname too?” Yukhei asks, hopeful eyes and blinding grin. "Like Winko?"

“No, you can't." Yuta takes a bottle of vodka from the shelf behind him. "But you _can_ have a shot, on the house.”

Yukhei grins. “Even better.”

 

\--

 

Johnny has his feet up on Yuta's usual seat again when Yuta arrives the next night. He is on his phone, glasses perched on the end of his nose, and when he looks up at Yuta it's over the top of them. “What time are you on the bar?” he asks. The glasses make him look like he's judging Yuta. He probably is.  

“I’m not tending bar tonight.” Yuta runs a hand through his hair, checking himself out in the backlit mirror. He looks windswept, he needs a haircut. 

“Right. I didn’t see you on the show schedule," Johnny points out. "Has Taeyong taken you off it? Have you pissed him off?" He tries to make it sound like an innocent remark, but Yuta can tell that Johnny genuinely cares about Taeyong's wellbeing.

“Oh, no I'm not dancing either." Yuta avoids Johnny's gaze. "It's my night off.”

“Then… Why are you here?” Johnny is definitely judging him now, Yuta can tell from the tone of his voice.

Johnny doesn't spend his nights off at work, mainly because he has friends and a life, but also because Taeyong panics every time he hangs around too long, blushing a lot and giggling at nothing, and Johnny has admitted before (after multiple drinks and less-than-gentle persuasion from Doyoung and Yuta) that Taeyong is something like his ideal type. It's a thing, and as much as they both don't ever seem to want to admit it, Yuta can read between the lines and between the lines reads "Breaking News: Boys in denial about their feelings avoid each other obviously."

“Why am I here?” Yuta asks himself aloud. He can probably come up with a decent answer, he thinks, but then he notices Sicheng out of the corner of his eye, and his brain stops working. “I’m here because...Uh.”

Sicheng is stretching in the back of the room, hair falling over his headband as he bends over. He’s so pretty, and so flexible, and Yuta actually _swoons_.

Johnny looks between the two scenes, over to where an oblivious Sicheng touches his toes, and then back to the obnoxious Yuta in front of him, and he rolls his eyes. He scoffs. “You know, I don’t know why I even asked that question when the answer is standing two metres away.”

Yuta drags his gaze away and sighs. “I think that he lies to me about when his performances are so I miss them.” He says to Johnny. "Last week he said he was onstage late all week, but he wasn't."

 Johnny nods solemnly. "Yep." He puts down his phone and tilts his head.

“Do you think he’s bothered by me?” Yuta bites at his lip. “Maybe he can tell that I like him a little bit.”

“A little bit? You think that you like him a little bit?” Johnny shakes his head in pure disbelief and laughs.

"He liked my cocktail, though," Yuta says. "He tells Yukhei nice things about me."

"And he ignores you completely in the locker room. It's clearly true love." Johnny looks at him. He takes the time to say, “Man, you're fucked,” before he goes back to staring at his texts. He's not wrong.

Yuta sits down on Doyoung's usual stool at the end of the vanity mirror and looks at his reflection. The only mirror in his apartment is a tiny oval shaped mirror in his bathroom, where the lighting is terrible and he has to lean over the sink to practise his eye make-up. It makes sense that he would come into work to try out some new eye looks. At least, that's what he tells himself as he sets out his brushes. He's mainly here for the exact reason Johnny is laughing at him over.

Despite his best attempts to look cool and composed as he brushes an anthracite shade from his favourite smokey YSL palette over his eyelids, Sicheng barely glances his way. He doesn't so much as remove his earbuds as he stretches, eyes closed for most of his prep, and when he changes into his stage outfit he does so with his back turned.

Yuta concentrates on his own reflection, feeling stupider and stupider as he makes himself up for nothing. Yukhei sits down next to him at some point in it all and tells him he looks pretty, and while Yuta is glad for the company and the compliment, it all feels a bit flat. 

Sicheng ignores him on the way out of the locker room, walks right past with his eyes trained on the door, focused and composed. “Good luck out there!” Yuta calls towards the door, but Sicheng doesn't even look back. Cool. 

Yuta is left with emotional whiplash and a beauty vlog worthy eye look. He takes a selfie which he uploads to the club's instagram account and thinks about going to see if Taeyong will let him work overtime since he looks so good and has nowhere to go. He heads up to the office, passing the main bar where Doyoung is mixing a neon pink drink for Taeil, who waves at him with a smile. He pauses to catch the end of Sicheng's dance, and it's beautiful and it's intimate, and the audience's eyes watch him with a mix of lust and amazement. 

Jaehyun likes his selfie and comments, "i miss you all x," and the way Doyoung looks at his phone as they ride the bus home makes him want to hug him a bit. "He'll come back," he says, and Doyoung pretends not to know who Yuta is talking about, but he smiles anyway.

Doyoung changes the subject. Says, "Stop coming to work on your nights off to stare at Sicheng. He gets enough of that from the customers."

"I don't stare at him," Yuta protests. "I just-- I like him and... And I think he might not _hate_ me." 

Doyoung scoffs. "I don't _hate_ you, but I'm not about to jump into bed with you."

Yuta frowns. "Only because you're saving yourself for Jaehyun's return," he says and laughs as he fights off Doyoung's jabs to his ribs.

By the time Yuta gets home, his selfie has two hundred and nineteen likes to it and fourteen more comments. One of them - a smiley face emoji and nothing else - is from a newly made account with the screen name W1nk0 and no posts, and the single emoji makes Yuta's entire week.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i checked who owned the real w1nk0 instagram handle & it's an account with 1 follower & just 2 photos of a cute labrador dog. you should all go see the cute dog!!!


	6. helping hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly, this fic is kind of ridiculously silly, but that's why it's fun to write! hope someone enjoys a giggle <3333

 

 

Doyoung takes Yuta by the arm and leads him to the corridor, where they can see into the office if they strain their necks. Taeyong is inside alone, acting awfully coy, smiling to himself and practically gliding around as he takes files off the shelf and checks off payments.

“What’s wrong with him?” Doyoung whispers.

Yuta shrugs. “He looks happy to me,” he says.

Doyoung just tuts at him. “Exactly! There’s something going on.”

Yuta says, “Maybe he’s about to fire us, I’m sure that would make him a very happy man.”

“I can hear you, Yuta,” Taeyong points out, sticking his head out of the office door, and Yuta is half impressed about Taeyong’s hearing and half annoyed with himself for getting caught.  “Don’t you two have routines to rehearse or a bar to tend or something?”

Doyoung mutters something about Yuta having dragged him away from his duties, which is a big fat lie, and Yuta tries to protest, but apparently Taeyong isn’t interested in what they have to say. “We’re having a staff meeting before doors open, up in the bar area. I’ll see you both there in thirty minutes,” he says, and then he shuts the door to the office on them so neither of them can spy on his freakishly relaxed behaviour.

As they head back to the main floor, Yuta wonders whether Taeyong’s demeanour might mean that he’s thought about his suggestion that giving in to his feelings for Johnny might not cause the whole world to crash and burn.

“He’s either completely lost the plot or he’s taken my advice about something,” Yuta tells Doyoung, as they head back to the bar. “That’s my theory.”

Doyoung pours two shots of vodka and hands one to Yuta. “If he’s taken your advice about anything, he’s _definitely_ lost the plot,” he says.

Yuta just gives his friend the middle finger and a perfect smile.

 

\--

 

Yuta saves a seat next to him in the meeting in case Sicheng might just like to sit next to him, but Yukhei arrives first and sits down on it with a grin. “Thanks, man,” he says. “Saving me a seat like this, very cool.”

“I didn’t save it for you.” Yuta crosses his arms.

Yukhei laughs. “He’s not in tonight,” he says, and Yuta wonders if there is anyone left at the club doesn’t know about his crush. “Can I have a cute nickname yet?”

Yuta ignores him.

The meeting, it turns out, is more of an announcement. Taeyong makes a show of thanking everyone but Yuta for their hard-work, which is apparently hilarious to Doyoung. He talks about the quarterly review and then - like music to Yuta’s ears - he proposes that they put on a staff social at the end of the month.

“A staff social? You mean a party?” Yukhei asks.

Doyoung calls, “And it’s paid for, yeah?”

“Don’t get too excited,” Taeyong warns. “There is a limit on the bar tab. But, yes, it’ll be paid for.”

After the meeting ends and everyone disperses, back to the training studio or the dressing room, Yuta and Doyoung hang back and follow Taeyong back to his office. “Have I ever told you I love you?” Yuta asks their boss.

“Yes, but you have Johnny to thank for this.” Taeyong looks away pointedly, somewhere between the wall-clock and the notice-board and says, quickly, all at once, “He, um, helped me come up with the idea when I was balancing the books. That’s how I knew I could afford to treat you all.”

“He did _what_?”

Taeyong is squiming, now, all flushed-cheeks and fists in his lap. “Just-- I just asked him to stop by the office and give me a hand, is all.”

Doyoung almost snorts his vodka and coke disguised as plain old coca-cola out of his nose. “A _hand_ ,” he repeats. Yuta gives him a high-five.

“Johnny took photography in college, right?” Doyoung says. “He’s not an accountant. You know that? We have one of those, it’s Taeil, he is _literally_ your accountant.”

Taeyong ignores this. “Anyway,” he says, “Johnny suggested we do something to relax.”

Doyoung is having a blast, now. His eyes grow wide and his grin is pixie-manic. “He gave you a _hand_ to _relax?_ ”

Yukhei appears in the doorway of the office at exactly the right time. “Who jerked who off?” he asks, as if that’s a normal question to him. It probably is.

“ _No one,_ ” Taeyong practically squeals. “Now, I don’t want to see any single one of you again until the end of your shift or maybe I _will_ fire you this time.”

 

\--

 

Yuta runs along the riverbank alone, stopping to check on his phone how many miles he’s ran this morning. He used to do this with Jaehyun, and even though they still connect on the app to compare times, it’s not quite the same without him physically here. Running by himself makes Yuta feel too serious about it, as though he’s trying to prove something that he isn’t. He messages Jaehyun his time (down on last week) and blames it on the tasting session he had with Doyoung and Johnny for his new potential cocktail recipe the night before.

The tasting session had been a thinly veiled attempt to get Johnny tipsy enough to tell them both what he’d really done to put Taeyong in a good enough mood to throw a party, but to Yuta’s disappointment, Johnny hadn’t spilled any secrets. Yuta had, however, managed to whittle the fruit base of his new drink down to cherry or apple, so at least some good had come of the elaborate excuse for an inquisition.

Doyoung had fallen asleep on his shoulder on the bus on their way home afterwards and he’d taken a selfie with Doyung’s sleeping form. He'd sent it in a direct message to Jaehyun, who had ignored it then and was continuing to ignore it in favour for talking about miles and minutes, the dumbass, but he didn't need to say anything, not really. Yuta just knew that Jaehyun had saved it and cropped Yuta out of the picture, and maybe he'd admit it eventually. 

 

—

 

When Yuta gets into work,  Johnny isn’t in the dressing room, feet up on Yuta’s usual chair, like Yuta expects him to be. Yuta checks the schedule which shows he’s definitely performing later, and he never hangs around the bar (probably so he doesn’t have to witness Yuta and Doyoung’s bickering), so there is only one place that Yuta reckons Johnny could be. He considers going down to the office and interrupting what could be a tender moment (or a handjob) between Taeyong and Johnny, but really, he doesn’t want to barge in on what he thinks _could_ be the cutest couple of the year, even if it would be worth it to see their faces.

Sicheng and Yukhei arrive together, which does _not_ give Yuta a sickening twinge of jealousy in his chest. Sicheng greets him with a smile, and Yukhei greets him with a fist-bump that he wasn’t expecting, and Yukhei says, “I’ve filled Sicheng in!”

Yuta chokes on thin air. “You’ve _what_?”

Yukhei’s brows are pulled together as though he hasn’t just dropped a clear innuendo. “Filled him in with the news about the party. What did you think I’d said?”

“Nothing,” Yuta replies, willing the blood to leave his cheeks, and Yukhei just shrugs before he heads towards the lockers.  

“So, um, what do you think about it?” Yuta turns to Sicheng, who is still there, watching him with an amused look. "The party?"

“It sounds exciting. I’ve never been to a staff social before, and Taeyong-hyung is so great, I’m sure it’ll be fun.”

Yuta nods. “There’s going to be so much booze. Plus, there’ll be lots of people there that you haven’t properly met yet. Our accountant, Taeil and his assistant, Jungwoo. And there a couple of guys who work here in the holidays but are at college and stuff. They might be in town.” He catches sight of Doyoung, who has entered the dressing room dressed in his bad-boy rocker get-up, leather jacket hanging off one shoulder, and it reminds him of someone else that might come. “It would be cool if Jaehyun came back that weekend to visit, too,” he says.

“Jaehyun?” Sicheng repeats, and Doyoung’s eyes dart to where they stand. Yuta thinks he must have a sixth sense, some sort of extraordinary hearing attuned to Jaehyun's name. A bit like the Amazon Alexa that he'd bought and never used, listening out for one certain name. “I think I’ve seen his pictures in the main bar. He looks…. Nice.”

“The word you’re looking for is handsome,” Doyoung says, appearing at Yuta’s elbow. “But don’t tell him I said that. I’ll deny it one hundred percent. That asshole.” He scowls. “Anyway, I have to do my hair,” he mutters and he walks away as quickly as he arrived, clearly upset as himself for even thinking to join in with Jaehyun talk.

Yuta makes a mental note to make him a very strong drink when he goes back to the bar.

“Jaehyun left without saying goodbye to Doyoung. It’s a sore subject.” Yuta says when Doyoung is out of ear shot. “But he’s a good guy, deep down. Just– he’s bad at feelings. They both are.”

Sicheng makes a little noise of understanding. “I hope they work it out,” he says, and he really seems to mean it, which is incredibly cute considering he has absolutely no investment in their relationship. He doesn’t even _know_ Jaehyun.

Yuta concludes that Sicheng must be, in fact, a real life angel, and is imagining him in a white gown with a pretty little halo when Sicheng asks, “Are you going to be at the party, hyung?”

“Me? Of course, I am. Why?”

“No reason,” Sicheng replies, which is all sorts of cryptic and makes Yuta want to know _everything_ going on inside of his head, but maybe not if it’s mean things about him. “I just wondered, because I-”

Except, Yuta doesn’t get to hear the rest, because then Johnny is at the door of the dressing room looking flustered and a bit pissed off, and saying to the room, “Who’s been telling everyone I’ve been giving Taeyong handjobs in the office?" 

“Are you sure you aren’t?” Doyoung asks from his place at the mirror.

Johnny pauses for slightly too long to be a coincidence. “He’s _stressed out_!”

“That doesn’t answer the question,” Yukhei points out.

“On the contrary, I think it does,” Yuta says, and Doyoung actually leaves his hair for a second to give him a high-five.

"What were you saying, before?" Yuta asks him later that night, at the bar between stages. But Sicheng only tilts his head, shrugs and says, "I can't remember, sorry," So the conversation remains unfinished. 


	7. french maid with muscles

 

Yuta spins around on his bar stool obnoxiously and then says, “Do you think that he asked me about the party because he doesn’t want me to be there? Or because he wants to go  _ with _ me?”

“I think,” Doyoung says, “That he probably asked you just out of politeness, because he had nothing else to say to you.”

Yuta pulls a face. This isn't what he wants to hear. Usually when Doyoung is being a sarcastic asshole he can argue back, but  this just sounds logical and boring, and  _ not  _ what Yuta needs right now.

“That’s worse,” Yuta says. "That means he has no strong feelings for me either way. That's not normal.”

Johnny watches their exchange with a look of disdain. “No, that  _ is _ normal. You know that undying love and absolute hate aren’t the only two emotions that exist?” He dries glasses as Doyoung passes them to him. He doesn't even work the bar shifts, not usually. But then, the bar is on the same floor as Taeyong's office, so it makes sense that he'd start hanging around here more now. 

“They aren't?” Doyoung asks. “You sure? Because  _ I _ absolutely hate Yuta and  _ you _ feel undying love for Taeyong, so they seem pretty accurate descriptors of the full range of human emotions to me.”

Yuta laughs. “And _ you _ have undying, unequivocal, never-ending love for Jung Jaehyun.”

“No, I do not.” Doyoung flicks his bar-towel at them both. “Get away from my bar, both of you.”

"I'm helping!" Johnny points out, but Doyoung only snatches the martini glass he's holding back and says, "I can handle this, thank you very much Mr Seo,” so Johnny admits defeat.

As he and Johnny head back towards the dressing room, Yuta takes their alone-time as an opportunity to dig for gold-plated gossip. “So, you and Taeyong…” He purposely trails off. He's cast his bait, and Johnny is just the type of fish he thinks might actually take it this time. He's been a lot more chatty, lately, and Yuta wonders whether he's actually started to care about what Taeyong's best friend might think of him. Yuta wonders if he'll be able to use this newfound power imbalance to his advantage and decides to keep that in mind for when he might require a favour, or a scapegoat for something that could get him fired.

Johnny actually blushes at the mention of Taeyong's name. “Yeah, well, I hear I might have you to thank for that. Or to blame for it. We’ll see how it goes.”

Yuta bares his teeth. “Treat him nicely, Johnny Seo." He wags a finger for full effect. "You don’t want to see me and Doyoung angry.”

Johnny just rolls his eyes. Maybe Yuta's imagined new newfound power over Johnny after all.  “I could take you both down easily and you know it.”

Yuta does know this, but he wasn't alluding to Johnny’s brawn. “With your fists, maybe. But we have top-level bitchiness to counter attack your-- uh, everything else.”

Johnny laughs, but it's good natured. “I’ll bear that in mind," he says. "Seriously, though– thanks.”

“Anytime, baby boy. Anytime.” Yuta breezes into the dressing room, which smells of multiple layers of drugstore body spray. Yukhei is there, sitting backwards on a chair, his arms dangled over the backrest. Figures. 

"Has it set?" He calls out, eyes shut tightly. Yuta can’t tell who is meant to hear this question. "Can I open my eyes yet?"

Johnny ignores the scene, choosing to sit down in his usual chair and get out his phone. Yuta wonders if he and Taeyong have traded nudes yet, then thinks that maybe that’s not something they would consider romantic, considering how furiously they had started blushing every time someone brought up their dicks recently. Yuta would think them prudes, but then he’s not had anyone to send a nude to in forever, though he’d jump at the chance if he did, so really he admires their restraint and ability to keep their cameras out of their relationship, whatever  said relationship is defined as right now.

"What's going on?" Yuta stands over Yukhei, and waves a hand in front of his face. 

His eyes are scrunched up, so he doesn’t respond to the gesture, but he does smile and say, "Yuta-hyung! I'm waiting for my eyelashes to dry. False eyelashes. Sicheng put them on for me, because my fingers are too--" he waves his hands in front of his face. "--fingery"

"Clumsy," Sicheng supplies helpfully, appearing from behind the lockers, where the dressing room leads to into the showers and bathrooms. "I didn't think Taeyong-hyung would be happy if one of us ended up in the hospital tonight after glueing their eyes shut."

Yukhei says, "For the record, that only happened to me once,” and Yuta gets the impression that he’s lying.

Yuta drags his usual stool closer to where Yukhei sits and considers Sicheng's work. It's good, the eyelashes are an ideal size - not too outrageously big, but big enough to be seen from the audience. They fan perfectly over Yukhei's cheeks like a shadow and they've been applied carefully, sitting as close as possible to the natural curve of his upper lid. He feels a stupid twang of jealousy at the thought of Sicheng working so closely, so delicately, on them. 

"They'll be dry now," Sicheng says, as he passes by. He smiles at Yuta, and Yuta almost misses it, too busy imagining Sicheng poking him in the eye with his index finger and him saying thank you for it.

"Which routine are you doing tonight?" Yuta asks Yukhei as he opens his eyes and blinks dramatically.

"I'm doing French Maid with Muscles,” Yukhei replies. “Apparently there's something about me wearing a tiny maid's apron that really gets the Friday crowd going."

"Nice." Yuta nods appreciatively. He's seen Yukhei rehearse that one, and even though he was only wearing sweats and a tank at the time and not the full, frilly maid get-up, Yuta could tell it would be a crowd-pleaser. 

Yukhei flexes and asks, “What about you?”

"I'm just working the pole tonight. Nothing special.” He shrugs. It really isn’t special, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. He likes nights like this, where nothing is planned and everything is intuition, even if he usually ends up with less tips when he isn’t performing on the main stage. Still, he’s already paid his rent this month - and on time, for once - so it doesn’t matter too much. 

“What about you, Sicheng?"

Sicheng pulls a face that almost looks like embarrassment. "Uh. I'm not on schedule tonight,” he admits. “I actually just came in to use the practise studio since I can’t come and practise in the day because of classes."

Yuta can’t help but smile. "That's cute.”

Yukhei gawps. “Is it? Why?" he asks. He raises his hand towards his face, his fist curled into a tight ball, and Yuta can tell what he's about to do.

"It just is." Yuta grabs out and stills Yukhei's wrist before he can rub at his eye. He shakes his head. "Don't mess up Winko's work."

"Oops. Sorry." Yukhei gives Sicheng a goofy grin and admits, "I keep forgetting about them!"

"They've only been on for five minutes," Sicheng points out, but he isn’t actually talking to Yuikhei, he’s talking to Yuta. Smiling at  _ Yuta _ , like they’re sharing a private joke between just them. It feels like what Yuta imagines floating on a cloud might feel like, all light and fluffy and warm in his soul. He could get used to this feeling. It's not like they don't talk usually -they do, sometimes, kind of-  but it's usually Yuta who initiates their conversation, and then who hangs around Sicheng begging for scraps like a scrawny, unwanted, street-cat.

(That's how Doyoung described it a few days ago, anyway, his own cat-like grin smug as he said it, but Yuta knows he's probably right.)

"Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on him,” Yuta swears, solemn as anything. He even puts his hand over his heart. He wonders if this is what babysitting might be like. He’s never babysat an actual child before, but now he’s spent five minutes with Yukhei and the eyelash glue, Yuta reckons he would make a fantastic father. "You should go and practise while the studio is free."

"Really? Thank you." Sicheng ducks his head as he says it and Yuta realises this is the second genuine thanking he's been given in the space of less than an hour. It's surely a new record, and he'd be bounding up to the bar to tell Doyoung if he hadn't just promised Sicheng that he'll babysit their colleague - who is  an adult baby wearing perfectly applied false eyelashes which Yuta admits bring out the colour of his blue contacts really well - until they're performing. Instead he mumbles that it's no problem, and that he hopes he'll see Sicheng again later, and even though Sicheng doesn't reply, Yuta is hopeful that maybe Sicheng has positive feelings towards him, after all, even if said feelings might not be undying love.

Yukhei has the screw-gap off the tube of eyelash glue before Yuta notices. “No,” Yuta tells him, and takes Yukhei’s hand in both of his own, prising his fingers apart. “Drop it.”

“I was just checking how much we’d used so far.” Yukhei pouts. 

“Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t,” Yuta says, because he isn’t one to judge: he’s made some bad choices of his own in the past. “But I promised Winko I’d keep you out of harm’s way, so you need to hand that over.” 

Yukhei surrenders the glue. “Sicheng is always saying how you’re really fun and so cool, and blah blah blah. But stealing my glue is  _ not  _ cool,” he moans.

From the other side of the room Johnny makes a strangled noise and turns a sudden shade of hot pink, almost dropping his phone into his lap, and Yuta wonders if he and Taeyong really are trading nudes after all.

 

\--

 

“Here– I made sure he didn't blind himself.” Yuta smiles, handing the eyelash glue to Sicheng as they get ready to leave work. Their fingers don’t brush as he passes it over, no matter how much Yuta angles his hand. How disappointing.  “How is the routine coming along?”

“I'm not sure,” Sicheng puts the tube of eyelash glue neatly onto the shelf in his locker and works on wrapping himself up in his scarf. “To be honest, I think it needs some more work.”

Yuta shakes his head. “I bet it's a masterpiece,” he says. He means it. He zips up his  jacket and rifles through the performance outfits in his locker for his headphones. Maybe he should come in one day and sort through his locker, he thinks, instead of spending all of his free time coming up with ways to make Doyoung threaten to kill him. 

Sicheng blushes. He fidgets with the buttons on his coat and mumbles, “It's difficult to know whether— you know. Whether it’s  _ sexy _ enough.”

“What?” Yuta gives up on looking for his headphones. 

Sicheng looks at Yuta pink cheeked and embarrassed, and asks, “How do you know if your own routine is sexy?”

“Do you want me to watch it?” Yuta asks. Really, he has never thought about this in regards to his own routines. He just assumes they  _ are _ sexy, because-- well, he’s never had any complaints. He is definitely sexy, he’s sure of it. “To get a second opinion?”

“No.” Sicheng shakes his head so hard Yuta is worried it might actually fall off his neck. “No, that's alright. I don’t want to be bother, and it isn’t finished yet. I don’t want anyone at all to see it until it’s finished.”

“I respect that.” Yuta smiles, though he knows that Yukhei and Taeyong were both present when Sicheng was practising the day before, Yukhei told Yuta as much while he was babysitting him, and he isn’t sure what to make of the fact that Sicheng has outright lied to him. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?” He shuts his locker, headphones forgotten.

“Oh. Aren’t you walking to the bus-stop now?” Sicheng asks him, and Yuta wonders why he looks so disappointed about it. He’s so confusing, and also really, really, cute with his coat buttoned up to the top like it is.

“No, I’m going for a drink with my friend Taeil. You know, our accountant?” Yuta pauses. “Hey, do you- uh- do you want to come with us?”

Sicheng shakes his head for the second time in two minutes, although this time he doesn’t look as panicked about the prospect of spending time with Yuta, so it’s less of a kick in the teeth. “No thank you. I don’t want to intrude and-- well, you know I don’t really drink alcohol.” He smiles in a way that looks like more of a grimace. It’s still beautiful. “Have fun, hyung.”

Yuta considers standing Taeil up, but he considers it for too long, and then Sicheng is gone.

 

\--

 

Taeil listens to Yuta’s retelling of his night intently, nodding in all of the right places. They’re in a booth in one of the new bars downtown that has no dancefloor and no-one hot tending bar, which Yuta does not approve of. When Yuta is finished his story, Taeil sits back in his seat and exhales deeply, as though he’s been the one talking.

Yuta frowns. “ _ You’re _ not the one who’s been talking!”

“I have whiplash.” Taeil sucks his gin and tonic through a straw.  “Are you sure he was  _ sad _ that you couldn’t walk him to the bus-stop? Not, just... Relieved?”

“I know what a sad face looks like,” Yuta says. “I look at Doyoung’s on a daily basis, and his is getting sadder and sadder the longer Jaehyun doesn’t text him.”

Taeil hums in commiseration. “It doesn’t sound like he dislikes you. But… Why wouldn’t he want you to help with his routine?”

“I don’t know…” Yuta takes an ice-cube out of his glass and pushes it around the table as he talks. “Well, now I think about it, the last time I watched him rehearse I guess I startled him a bit. I thought he’d seen me come in, but he looked so shocked when the music stopped and I was there…”

Taeil pulls a face that makes him look like he’s sucking on a lemon wedge, which he definitely isn’t because the lemon wedge from his gin and tonic is still in his glass. 

“...And then I told him I’d tip him all of my money and offered to make him a boozy drink. Which I  _ then _ found out he can’t really handle.”

Taeil’s lemon-sucking face scrunches up even further.

“Oh god, he does hate me! He  _ should  _ hate me. He can tell I think he’s a gift to all of mankind and he thinks I’m trying to get him drunk all the time. No wonder he didn’t want me to watch him dance again. Or come out with us.” Yuta sighs dramatically and throws his head back. “He’s just too nice to tell me to fuck off.”

“Maybe, but maybe not,” Taeil says, completely unhelpfully. “Still, didn’t you say that he tells Yukhei all sorts of nice things about you?”

Yuta sighs. “Apparently, yeah.” 

“I don’t think he hates you then, but that’s about all I can figure out.” Taeil points to Yuta’s empty glass. The ice-cube next to it is almost melted. “Want another drink?”

“Yes please.” Yuta nods. He gives up on trying to figure Sicheng out, for tonight anyway. Taeil is usually pretty level-headed, and he hardly even rules in favour of Yuta, even if they are friends, so he decides to accept Taeil’s opinion and try not to think too hard for the rest of the night. Alcohol usually helps with that. “Make it a double measure,” he adds, and Taeil mutters something about not being made of money, but he pays for the drinks anyway.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 i need lucas in the french maid outfit in my life thanks.


	8. bendy things

Yuta persuades Taeil to buy him three more drinks before he realises he's being emotionally manipulated and cuts Yuta off to go and suck face with a guy that resembles Tom Hardy but even more buff and with less hair. "Just because your love life is non-existent, doesn't mean I'm going to buy you drinks all night," he says, before he crosses the dance floor to ensnare his ridiculously attractive prey.

He does have another Tequila Sunrise sent over to Yuta's table fifteen minutes later, though, so Yuta can't complain, and he doesn't. Instead he blows Taeil a kiss and waves him goodbye as Taeil leads his conquest out of the club and, presumably into a cab back to his slick apartment downtown.

Yuta waits for the night-bus back to his place, cursing the skies as it starts to rain. It's just a drizzle, at first, but then the heavens truly open and Yuta has to stick his mobile phone up under his top to save it from drowning. The bus is late, and when it finally arrives, he is wet and he is sober, and he's feeling sorry for himself.

He texts Jaehyun, but Jaehyun must be asleep. It is almost two in the morning, so Yuta wouldn't blame him. Still, it makes him feel a little lonely. Yuta doesn't like to feel lonely - that's one of the reasons he spends so much time at work, if he's honest. His family aren't nearby, so he makes sure his friends are, wherever he can, and he always has his phone on, just in case someone needs him.

No one seems to need him tonight; Taeil is busy getting busy, Taeyong is probably straddling Johnny in his office chair and he knows that Doyoung was going to dinner with his sister after he finished work, so he'll probably be playing up his bachelorhood in order to make his sister - who has been married since last July - jealous that she's not single and fancy-free like him, even if Yuta knows that truthfully Doyoung would do anything to be settled down (but only if it's with Jung Jaehyun).

He poses for a selfie, the harsh strip-lighting of the night-bus a weirdly flattering lighting. His wet hair looks almost sexy, he decides, as he adds a soft filter (the strip-lighting might be flattering, but it's not  _ that _ flattering) and adds a sleepy face emoji before he uploads it to his instagram feed.

He gets a handful of likes and a couple of comments, and they keep him company until he gets home, hanging his jacket over the radiator in his hallway and shivering his way into his bedroom, where he throws himself down onto his bed, wriggling out of his jeans, wet and clinging to his calves, with a huff. When they're off, he settles back against his pillows and pulls his blanket up over himself. Maybe Jaehyun's woken up and wants to chat, he thinks, but when he checks his phone his message remains unread.

He does have a new notification, though. It’s from @w1nk0 and it says ‘go 2 sleep, hyung!’ so, a little more happily, he does. 

 

\--

 

Doyoung is pouring flutes of Champagne out at the bar when Yuta arrives at work the next afternoon, and he isn't even doing it  _ secretly _ . Taeyong is sitting at the bar himself, his hand steadying a flute as Doyoung pours the golden liquid into it, and he doesn't even look angry that Doyoung is wasting their stock.

"What are we celebrating? Don't tell me Johnny's proposed to you already." Yuta raises an eyebrow as he slides onto the bar-stool next to Taeyong.

Taeyong goes red, but he doesn't bother refuting the dig. "Doyoung's sister is pregnant." he says. "She told him at dinner last night."

Yuta accepts a flute of Champagne from Doyoung. "She is?"

Doyoung nods. "With  _ twins. _ "

"Uncle Doyoung." Yuta mulls the sound of it over. "It has quite a ring to it. Congrats, bro."

"Yeah, I mean it'll be cool to be an uncle, but that's not why we're drinking." He puts down the bottle and holds his glass up in a toast. "We're drinking because  _ she  _ can't, for nine whole months. She's  _ devastated, _ it's fucking hilarious."

Yuta laughs. "You're terrible," he says. "I love it, obviously."

"Well _I'm_ drinking because I think it's wonderful news," Taeyong pipes up. "And because I know you'll both work extra, extra hard this weekend since I just allowed you the privilege of drinking my stock for the very first time." He looks at them both with the sort of intense kitten-soft expression that literally no one could say no to.

"Do you think Johnny's told him?" Doyoung whispers once Taeyong heads back to the office to organise payroll. "About us always being drunk during work hours?"

"Oh, he's known about that for ages, I can tell," Yuta replies. He smiles at Doyoung. "He just pretends not to know, because he loves us."

“Awww. I love him too.” Doyoung presses his hand flat against his chest with a choked expression and says, "I'm going to work  _ so _ hard for him tonight."

Yuta takes a drink and laughs. "Yeah, me too. You know, we’re really the worst employees, we need to change that. But, first, should we have just one more glass of Champagne?"

 

\--

 

Yukhei is practicing obscene things he can do with his tongue in the mirror of the dressing room when Yuta heads in to put his bag away. He is on the bar tonight, so he doesn’t need to get changed - he’s wearing a cap-sleeved T-shirt with the club logo on the breast pocket and jeans that are just about on the right side of smart casual, and that’s enough for Taeyong whose main rules about tending bar seem to be, ‘please just don’t set fire to anything’ and ‘come on,  _ at least  _ wear a shirt and jeans. I don’t care if you think you’ll get better tips this way.’

“Please tell me that this isn’t your come face.” Yuta slings his bag onto a chair and sits down next to it.  

“I’ve never seen my own come face, but I bet it’s super hot,” Yukhei says. Yuta would be grossed out, but then he thinks  _ his _ come face is probably quite attractive too, so he doesn’t say anything. Maybe he has more in common with their newest dancer than he thought he did.

Yukhei stops pulling faces for long enough to explain. “One of the customers tonight said I’d look good with a tongue piercing, so I was just– you know, checking out my tongue.”

"Of course you were" Yuta frowns. “Don’t get a tongue piercing, you’d probably get it stuck on something and end up in the ER.” 

“Yukhei closes his mouth. He looks like he’s imagining specific, gory, scenarios. “Fuck, you’ve totally put me off that idea, I’m sad.”

“Good. Sicheng would thank me for it, I’m sure.” Yuta opens his bag. There’s a pack of instant noodles in there that must have burst open at some point in the last few hours and tiny bits of crunchy noodle dust his belongings. He’ll have to deal with that later. He stands up and heads to his locker so he can lock the bag up and forget about the mess for a while. “Speaking of, what time is he performing tonight?”

“Errr.” Yukhei does a sort of stilted movement with his hands that makes him look like a malfunctioning android. “Errrm, I–– Don’t know?”

“Right. Well, I’ll just have to check the schedule. Are you going to be okay if I leave you alone in here?”

“What if I just got a very, very small piercing?” Yukhei is _ still  _ sticking his tongue out. He accidentally leans forward too far and licks the mirror. Yuta pretends not to notice. 

“Do whatever you want, just— be careful.” He sighs. “And let me take you to my piercer if you’re serious about it, don’t just go to some random parlour you haven’t researched.”

“Cool!” Yukhei turns back around. He looks so happy, it’s kind of cute. “You’re the best. Also, Sicheng is performing just after eleven!”

 

\--

 

Yuta sets up the bar happily and even manages to persuade a couple of them to let him make them a surprise cocktail, so he can continue to perfect his recipes. He decides to name his new drinks inappropriately and finds it hilarious to say to Doyoung, “I bet you’ve never given anyone a Triple Orgasm like I just have,” when he comes by the bar to join Yuta as it gets busy. 

Doyoung replies with mirth and refuses to try the drink, but it doesn’t deter Yuta from enjoying his shift. At five to eleven, he excuses himself from the bar with an excuse about needing to go to the stockroom, and heads through to the main-stage, practically skipping the whole way.  He spots Sicheng stretching at the side of the stage, and when Sicheng raises his hand in greeting, Yuta waves back. This is great, this is a  _ great  _ night. He’s had positive reviews on his new drinks, he’s still feeling the faint buzz of champagne and now the man of his dreams (quite literally, considering the content of them the last few days) is in a skimpy outfit that perfectly shows off the taut lines of his lower stomach and is about to show everyone his new routine.

“What are you doing here?” Sicheng asks him, and it doesn’t sound  _ rude _ exactly, but he isn’t smiling, which does read a little.. Disappointing. 

Yuta blinks. “Yukhei told me you’d be performing now.”

“I should have known he’d tell.” Sicheng closes his eyes. “Look, if you don't mind... Do you think you could you leave before I go onstage?”

_ Ouch.  _

“Don’t you — You really don’t want me to see your new routine?” Yuta doesn’t understand. Sure, he knows Sicheng didn’t want anyone to see it before it was done, but now  _ everyone’s  _ going to see it, so in less than a few minutes the air of mystery is going to be well and truly over.

“Please?” Sicheng’s eyebrows furrow into a worried sort of wriggly line, as if they’ve been drawn on with a sharpie. Don’t you need to be on the upstairs bar?”

Yuta inhales through his nose in one long breath. “Yeah, I guess I do,” he says. He hasn’t felt this awkward in a while, not since he fell asleep on the bus home once and drooled all over a woman’s shoulder.  “Well, fuck, this is embarrassing. You don’t want me here, I’ve got it. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Sicheng looks so relieved Yuta can practically see it in a glowing aura around his (beautiful) head. “You can wait backstage, or-- or, I know! Make me one of those Cherry drinks upstairs at the main bar, and wait for me there. okay?”

Yuta nods, mutely. He isn’t often stumped for words, so it's quite novel really and he'll have to tell Doyoung so he can have a laugh. Finally finds the ability mumble, “Sure.”

“Now, go.” Sicheng smiles at him and shoos him away, and Yuta tries not to feel too wounded. He can deal with this, he’s known rejection before and it’s never killed him yet. It just-- well, it feels like shit.

 

\--

 

When Yuta gets back to the bar, his heart sinks even further into his stomach. Taeyong is there, serving someone a beer, and Yuta has clearly not been to the stock room, being empty handed and all. Yuta braces himself for a lecture about how disappointing he’s been, but instead he is met with an amused smile. 

“You’re back? I t hought you’d be watching Sicheng with his legs behind his head. Boy is  _ flexible _ .” Taeyong says it with an air of pride. He did mentor Sicheng’s recent routine, after all.  _ He _ was allowed to watch. “That’s why I thought I’d pop out of the office and cover the bar since Doyoung’s on his break.  _ Someone  _ has to sell alcohol to my customers.”

“Sorry.” Yuta pouts a little. “But, actually, I’m not feeling great… Do you think maybe Doyoung could close up without me?”

“Why, what’s wrong?” Taeyong looks as though he’s checking him over thoroughly for visible signs of illness. “Is it your head? Your chest? Should I get the accident book?”

Yuta shakes his head. “I’m just not feeling one hundred percent well. Maybe I’m coming down with a flu,” he suggests, which he  _ might  _ be, if the key symptom of this flu is a wounded ego.

“No.  _ Please  _ do not come down with the flu, not just in time for the weekend,” Taeyong begs. He looks desperate, big brown eyes wide with horror. “We have, like, _ five _ party bookings and I need you to do that completely obscene routine with the whipped cream at one of them. They've requested it  _ especially _ .”

“Why would anyone want to see that?” Doyoung appears, smelling of cigarettes (Yuta makes a note to make sure he tells Jaehyun that he has driven Doyoung to his old vice - perfect fuel for his long game plan to get them to just  _ be in love _ like they’re clearly meant to be). “Unless it was me doing it, of course.”

Yuta feigns a yawn and coughs into his balled fist twice, and maybe it’s his lack of bite at Doyoung’s remark that seals the deal and sells his act to his friends. “Maybe with an early night in bed…” He does feel bad for lying; Taeyong is his friend and this is his business, and maybe he’s being petty here, but he really doesn’t want to face the embarrassment of seeing Sicheng again right now. As much as Doyoung likes to claim he doesn't have an ounce of it, Yuta does have some shame. Just maybe not as much as some other people.

“Just… Call me if you can’t come in tomorrow night,” Taeyong tells him. “And get better.”

“I will. Before I go, I just need to– I said I’d do something,” he mumbles, and heads around the back of the bar before he goes, getting out the ingredients for his new recipe.

Doyoung watches and just as Yuta is adding the finishing touches - sugar on the rim of the glass and a single candied cherry on the side - he dips his finger into the open jar of sugar and eyes the drink curiously. “Is this new?” 

Yuta nods. “ I’ve been working on it. It's for Sicheng, tell him it’s the cherry liqueur special he wanted, The Bomb. I'm heading home to lie down and maybe do some crying.”

Doyoung makes an ‘O’ with his mouth, part concerned and part intrigued,  but he doesn’t question Yuta further. “I’ll make sure he gets it,” he says. “Oh and don’t tell Jaehyun I’ve been smoking again!”

 

\--

 

Yuta tends the wounds to his pride with a large pizza and a warm beer. He texts Jaehyun a photo of his meal and Jaehyun texts back, right away, asking why he isn’t in work and whether he’s finally been sacked by Taeyong.

Yuta calls him. “ _ No _ ,” he says, by way of greeting. “I haven’t been sacked. I’m just, you know, sick.”

“Sick.” Jaehyun repeats. “This isn’t facetime so you need to tell me… When you said sick, did you use air-quotes or not?”

“Maybe. Yes.” He sighs. “The boy I like didn’t want me to watch him doing bendy things and I felt shitty so I ducked out on my shift early, if you must know.”

Jaehyun laughs, but gently, so Yuta can’t be mad at him. “Is this the new guy you’ve added on Instagram who does the splits a lot?”

“Yeah…” Yuta sniffs. “How do you know?”

“You text me about him all the time,” Jaehyun points out. “Plus, the only posts you liked on instagram last week were from his account. You’re not subtle.”

Yuta huffs. “I liked your posts too!”

“You didn’t.”

“Oh. Well, I intended to and that’s what counts.”

Jaehyun laughs again. “Well, don’t stay off work too long. Someone needs to keep an eye on Doyoung to make sure he’s still-”

“Don’t worry, even when I’m not there I know he is definitely still angrily horny over you.” Yuta says and finishes his beer. 

“I was going to say to make sure he’s  _ okay _ .” Jaehyun pauses. “But, uh, that’s good to know.”

“Hmmm.” Yuta closes the lid of the pizza box, and then opens it again and picks out another slice. He isn’t going to lie to his best friend about his other best friend, especially when he’s already lied to his other _ other _ best friend tonight about being sick when he’s meant to be working for him. No, Doyoung is sad and he’s s _ moking _ , and everyone knows it, and Jaehyun knows it too. So he just takes a bite of pizza and says, “Jaehyun? When are you coming home?”

Jaehyun's voice is far away when he says, “I don’t know."

Yuta finishes the entire pizza and opens a second beer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <333 hope someone is still enjoying this. come talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/lilacsui) or [CC](https://curiouscat.me/rainingover) if you want!


	9. body glitter

Yuta is brushing his teeth when he hears the knock on his front door. He’d been tempted just to drag himself into bed without washing up, because he’s tired and a little tipsy, and he’s kind of emotional over the fact that Jaehyun sounded so sad on the phone. He needs to think up a situation he can manipulate to force Doyoung and Jaehyun to sort out their feelings and preferably one that won’t get him arrested or end up with anyone in the hospital.

At first he ignores the knocking. It’s not like he’s expecting anyone and he isn’t late on his rent this month so it can’t be his landlady, not this time. He guesses that whoever it is has misread the number on his door (it is 66, but sometimes when Doyoung comes over he swings the letters round to read 69, and now they keep ending up that way when he shuts his door harder than he meant to) and the knocking is actually intended for another tenant, so he carries on brushing his teeth and does a little booty shake in the mirror while he’s at it. When the knocking subsides, Yuta figures that whoever was outside has recognised their mistake soon and moved on down the corridor to leave him and his misery in peace.

Except, the knocking starts up again after thirty seconds or so, and it’s louder this time. Yuta wipes his mouth on the hand towel on the rail and heads into the hallway, quickly trying to  calculate how long ago he paid rent, just to make sure he really isn’t late. “Uh, this is number sixty-six,” he calls through the door. “Not sixty-nine.” 

“I know that.” Comes the response. “It’s Winko– um, Sicheng. It’s Sicheng!" 

Yuta is relieved it isn’t someone after rent money, but he is also completely and utterly freaking out. Why is Sicheng outside of his apartment door? Why is Sicheng - the purest of all souls (or something like that, he’s drunk okay?) - outside of his apartment door at almost one in the morning? He knows he isn’t dreaming, because he’s sure that even the most boring of his dreams wouldn’t start with something as mind-numbing as just brushing his teeth, surely, but Yuta doesn’t know how Sicheng even has his address, nevermind _why_ he’d want to visit it. So, he hovers behind the door, putting his hand out to open the lock, and then pulling it back. He smells like spilled beer and he’s wearing his oldest sweatpants, this is not good and definitely not how he ever envisioned Sicheng coming over to his apartment. He hasn't even tidied! For a moment, Yuta wishes he was more like Taeyong.  

Sicheng clears his throat, calling a little louder through the door, “Um, am I allowed to come in?”

 “Yeah! Yeah, just, um, finding my keys!” Yuta lies. He pulls up the hem of his tshirt and sniffs the material. There is a definite beery smell. Ugh. He contemplates just taking it off, but that would be a bit forward, even for him, so he gives up and opens the door. “Hi!" 

“Hey.” Sicheng looks at him with inquisitive eyes, like he wasn’t sure what he’d be greeted with when he opened the door. “Doyoung-hyung gave me your address."

 “What’s up?” Yuta steps back to let him in. He wanders inside, glancing around with bright baby-animal eyes like he did that first day at the club when Taeyong was giving his new-starter tour. “Um, you can go through to the living room.”

“Thanks.” Sicheng smiles and walks past him. He’s still in his stage outfit from the looks of things, or at least he’s still wearing his stage make-up. His big coat is on over the top of it all, complete with the furry hood that envelops his cute little face. It’s cute. “You weren’t there when I finished my performance,” he says. He turns around when he reaches the living room, as if waiting for permission to enter it. He’s like a very well behaved vampire, Yuta thinks. Bless him. 

He gestures for Sicheng to enter and Sicheng smiles at him before heading inside. Yuta tries, desperately, to find clues to how much of a shithole Sicheng thinks his apartment looks from his expression, but his face remains unreadable, flushed cheeks and rose-bud lips giving nothing away. 

“I made your drink, didn’t you get it?” Yuta still has no idea what is going on and why Sicheng is here in the middle of the night. For a moment he wonders if Sicheng is about to ask him to leave his own apartment, just like he’d shooed Yuta away from the stage a few hours earlier. He'd probably go, too. 

“I didn’t really want the drink.” Sicheng twists his mouth into a tiny pout. “I did drink it though. It was quite strong. But really nice! Really, really, nice.”

No wonder his cheeks are so pink, Yuta thinks. He had been in a rush to leave and he can’t remember if he put in double measures of the liqueur. “Thanks,” he says.

Sicheng begins to undo the buttons on his coat. “Can I take my coat off?” he asks, already halfway through doing so. Yuta wouldn’t mind if he asked to take off more than his coat, and his mind goes there for a second, before he manages to drag it back to reality, where Sicheng is paused with his fingers at the fourth button down on his coat.

Yuta nods. “Of course you can. So, uh, why are you here? Not that I mind, I'm just– confused.”

Sicheng finishes unbuttoning his coat and takes it off, placing it carefully over the arm of the couch. Yuta notes that he is wearing a sweater over his stage outfit, which is a shame because he has a very nice body, but Yuta is also glad for it, because he wouldn’t want Sicheng to catch a cold. It’s conflicting, having feelings for someone that co-exist in both his dick and in his heart. 

There is body glitter peeking out from the neck of the sweater. Sicheng laughs and says, “I know, I kind of overdid it with the glitter,” when he catches Yuta staring. “My mistake was letting Yukhei apply it."

Yuta opens his mouth to say something, but his dick wants to say something dumb and crude that only Doyoung would appreciate, so he closes it again.

Sicheng continues. “I’m _here_ because you weren’t at the bar but Doyoung was, so he gave me my drink and said then he said you’d had to leave suddenly because you were sick.” He plays with the cuff of his sweater.

“Oh.” Yuta says. He’d forgotten he was meant to be sick, what what with the mind-imploding experience of having Sicheng standing in the middle of his living room with body glitter sparkling on his skin and a nervous look in his eyes. He coughs once for good measure and hopes it doesn’t sound as fake to Sicheng’s ears as it does to his own. “Yeah.”

“Except,” Sicheng continues, “Except he didn’t _say_ sick. He said that you are kind of bad at dealing with rejection, but not in a creepy way, just in the way that you’d probably be at home watching Titanic and eating your feelings.”

Sicheng glances at the empty pizza box which is still on Yuta’s coffee table, and then glances back at him.

“Shit, he really does know me very well.” Yuta can’t help but feel slightly impressed by Doyoung’s perceptive ability, even if he really didn’t need to mention Yuta’s penchant for crying over Titanic (which he will always defend as a god-tier movie to cry to). He sighs. “Okay, I'm not sick. But you don’t need to worry about me. I only have a very slightly wounded ego, you really didn’t need to come round. It’s okay that you don’t like me.”

Sicheng blinks at him. His eyebrows furrow in the middle, a tiny wrinkle appearing in the centre of his forehead. For once, he doesn’t look unreadable; he looks confused. “I do like you.”

“You’re so cute.” Yuta doesn’t meant to say it aloud, but it comes out anyway. Damn.

“Thank you?” Sicheng looks even more perplexed. “Anyway, I wanted to apologise for tonight. I was going to DM you but I thought do it in person - my grandmother always said apologies only matter face to face - and I don’t have classes tomorrow so I thought I’d do it now. I can never sleep for hours after I get home, anyway.” He says it all quickly, like he’s been worrying about it and needs the words out in the open, and Yuta feels awfully guilty for the second time that night.

“You should apologise? _You_ do not need to apologise.” He takes a breath. “I was making you uncomfortable, wasn’t I? That’s why you asked me to leave? _I_ need to apologise to you.” 

“That’s not exactly…” Sicheng continues to play with the cuff of his sweater, rolling the material between the finger and thumb of his opposite hand. “Nervous. You make me nervous. I don’t want to mess up my routine in front of you. You’re so cool and you’ve been so nice to me…  I’m sorry if I offended you by making you leave, but it was only because I was due on stage in like one minute and you were just _there_ , and I didn’t want to mess up. I want you to think I’m cool too.”

“I do think you’re cool,” Yuta says. (And hot, he thinks. Very hot, very cool, and quite confusing.) “I have a very high opinion of you— of your abilities as a dancer, I mean. And Taeyong says you can put your legs behind your head.”

He nods. “Oh, I can! Both of them, at the same time, actually, and I can hold them there for quite a while. I’ll show you some time.” He pauses, adding, “unless it’s not something you’d want to see. Did you finish watching Titanic?”

“Uh. No, They’ve only just hit the iceberg. I got sleepy because of the beer which I was drinking to– to, um, cure my sickness and I didn't want to ruin the emotional impact of the ending by watching sleepy.” 

The corners of Sicheng’s lips curl up into a tiny laughing smile. His eyes match, twinkling with amusement. “Do you want to watch the rest? Ugh, I wish I wasn’t covered in this sticky stuff.” He looks down at the glitter.

Yuta’s brain is still on visions of Sicheng with both of his legs behind his head and now the phrase sticky stuff is in the mix it’s getting difficult to not actually die. That would serve him right - faking illness and then dying of heart failure because he’s thinking about fucking his crush. Doyoung would get a great laugh out of his death.

“Why don’t you get Netflix up and find where you were up to and I’ll go wash this off,” Sicheng says. ”You do have a shower in here, right?”

Yuta nods, mutely. Pliant, good-boy Winko is being assertive? _Again_? Yuta tries really hard not to get down on one knee and propose to him right there. It’s a struggle, but he manages, and he’s proud of his restraint. “There’s probably only about three minutes worth of hot water left, but it’s all yours,” he says, as though he's just offered Sicheng the entire world.

“Thank you." Sicheng actually looks at him as though he _has_ and it makes Yuta feel weirdly proud, like he's done something worthy of awe, after years of disappointing people, or at least feeling like he has. It's kind of sad, he guesses, that offering a boy wearing five persons worth of body-glitter less than five minutes of hot water makes him feel good about himself, but Yuta has always believed in small victories (not getting fired, talking Taeyong into realising he needed to get dick, his parents only speaking disapprovingly of his lifestyle and profession fourteen times over the course of the three days they visited recently being just some of them) and so he'll take it, happily.

"There are towels on the shelf beside the shower." Yuta mentally maps out his bathroom as he shows Sicheng back down the hall to the tiny bathroom. "And there's this really nice exfoliating scrub I stole from a hotel which you can use, not that I think you need to exfoliate or anything!

Sicheng follows just behind him. "I would’ve showered at the club but Taeyongie-hyung said he needed to check the cleaners had done a good job, so he closed the showers down early and Johnny-hyung was there so- _oh_.” Sicheng stops and when Yuta turns back, Sicheng's eyes have grown impossibly wide. “They were _hooking up_ in there, weren’t they?”

“They really think they’re being subtle about it.” Yuta laughs. “But they don't know the meaning of the word. It's cute. Hey, you won’t tell Taeyongie I wasn’t actually sick tonight, will you?”

Sicheng purses his lips in thought. “Only if you don’t tell Yukhei that I’ve hidden all of the body glitter from him.”

“Deal.” Yuta grins and opens the bathroom door for him and turns on the light. He's glad he fixed the broken lightbulb last week. He can't wait to text someone, _anyone_ , in about one minute that there is an adorable, bendy, man in his shower. He won't provide context, because that would be less fun. Maybe he'll text Taeil, Taeil will be excited for him, probably. "Do you want me to fix you a drink? A soft one, I mean."

“Sure." Sicheng hovers in the doorway before he closes the bathroom door right in Yuta's face and asks, "You’re still coming to the staff social next week, right?”

“Yeah." Yuta tilts his head. "Why?”

“Get the movie ready!” Sicheng calls back at him, as if that's some sort of answer, and the door slams shut. 

It's _glorious._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel free to yell @ me here and/or on my [twt](https://twitter.com/lilacsui) or [cc](https://curiouscat.me/rainingover) :3


	10. an interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> time for some dojae!

**one year prior to Sicheng’s arrival:**

 

Yuta can’t take Doyoung’s bullshit about being impervious to the charms of Jung Jaehyun any longer. He takes the empty glasses from Doyoung’s tray and places them into the dishwasher carefully, and says, “If you tell me the truth now, I’ll do dishwasher duties for a month”

“I’m telling the truth.” Doyoung shrugs. Lying. “I don’t like him anymore than I like anyone else we work with.”

Yuta huffs and one of the glasses he’s packing into the dishwasher clanks against another a little harder than it should have done. _Oops_ . He stands up. “Doyoung, I can _tell_ you like him, because you’re meaner to him than you are to, say, Johnny, but not as mean as you are to me. You’re that… Middle kind of mean. The one that means you’re flirting.”

Doyoung stares at him. “Are there words coming out of your mouth? Because it just sounds like a lot of pointless noise.”

“See, you wouldn’t be this mean to _him_. You’re only proving my point.”

Doyoung has his index fingers pressed against his temples as though he’s trying to ward off a terrible headache. “He’s attractive and has a nice personality, okay? Can you leave me to work now?”

“Fine then.” Yuta ponders this. “Hey - do you want me to drop into conversation with him how you once spent an entire weekend in college in your room teaching yourself how to deepthroat on a twelve inch dildo?”

Doyoung is just about to launch himself over the dishwasher and strangle Yuta when someone clears their throat behind them.

“Um, uh sorry. I don’t think I was meant to hear that.” Jaehyun looks almost sheepish, one dimple deeper than the other as he grins from the other side of the bar.

This is perfect timing: Yuta lives to see another day _and_ he’s now helped out his best bro by putting out there a tantalising fact. Doyoung would disagree, but whatever. “On the contrary, Jaehyun,” Yuta starts, “You were––”

Doyoung practically shrieks at him and then turns to Jaehyun without actually looking him in the eyes. “Will you take him away?” he asks, gesturing towards Yuta as though he’s a thing and not a person. How rude. “He’s annoying me.”

Jaehyun laughs. “Sure. He can come help me choose the best track for my set later.”

They’re still talking as if Yuta isn’t there, and Yuta feels awfully smug about the whole thing. One surefire way to tell your friends are into each other is when they literally forget about your existence in the room.

“Thanks.” Doyoung runs his fingers through his hair in a move that says _I’m stressed out but also sexy_ . “I’ll owe you one,” he adds, and in the moment that follows, Yuta just _knows_ where Jaehyun’s mind has gone to, which is, to Doyoung’s college dorm room four years ago.

 

**8 months prior:**

 

Jaehyun is laughing at him as they collapse on the grass. “It hurts,” Yuta moans as he lies down. A kid to their left throws a frisbee and it narrowly misses Jaehyun’s head. He avoids it effortlessly.

Jaehyun looks at him. “What does?”

“Everything.”

“Good, that means you’ve really pushed yourself today.” He sounds far too happy about this. “I’m proud, hyung.”

“I’ve pushed too far.” Yuta chugs from the water bottle Jaehyun tosses him. “I think I’ve lost my vision, everything’s dark.”

Jaehyun snorts. “I think that’s just your sunglasses.”

“Maybe. _Anyway_ , you have a lot of energy this morning considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Considering you were at Doyoung’s place until after three last night.” Yuta smirks. A ninety minute run and burning limbs was worth it for this moment because Jaehyun turns beetroot red (or maybe it just looks that way behind Yuta’s sunglasses, he isn’t taking them off to check) and says, “How do you…?”

“Doyoung might have mentioned it in passing by accident,” Yuta says, not mentioning that he had then forced Doyoung to tell him every detail of their plans in return for agreeing to let Doyoung have his half of the tips after the bachelor party they were performing for that night. He kind of wishes he hadn’t done that since his rent is due in three days, but Yuta never goes back on a promise so he’d handed the cash over to Doyoung at the end of the night with only the slightest of hesitation.

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Jaehyun replies. “But nothing happened.”

“Seriously?” Yuta actually pushes his sunglasses off his face in order to ensure the full effect of his disbelief is conveyed.

“It’s not like that.” Jehyun shakes his head. “We were working on a routine.”

“It’s _so_ like that.” Yuta lets his sunglasses fall back over his eyes. “It _is_ like that though... Isn’t it?”

“Yeah. There’s potential.” Jaehyun shrugs. “But I’m not in a rush. I’m, you know, playing the long game.”

Yuta has never played the long game. He barely knows what playing the long game _means_. He’s only ever played the hard and fast and over with before it even started game, and that’s suited him so far in his life. But, he gets it. If you like someone - really like them, in that gooey heartfelt way that the protagonists in the dramas he watches feel - Yuta can see why you’d wait for things to work themselves out, rather than jump in head first and end up with concussion.

Still, he wishes Jaehyun and Doyoung would just hurry up about it so he could gloat in their faces.

  


**6 months prior:**

 

Yuta is hugging the payroll folder to his chest so that Taeyong can’t get distracted with it as he lists ideas that could finally get their friends to make the Next Step once and for all. He’s onto idea number eight - Taeyong has refused one to seven already. “We could lock them in the club! By accident!”

“No.” Taeyong shakes his head. “Totally against fire safety regulations.”

“We can leave a window open for them,” Yuta suggests. It seems a fair compromise.

“All of your ideas are completely prohibited.” Taeyong is wearing his concerned face and those worried eyes that he usually reserves for having to preview dangerous routines. “This is why I do not encourage work romance.”

“Putting the fact that this place is your entire livelihood to one side… They’re _in love._ They’re so in love that I can feel it oozing right out of their pores when I stand next to them.”

“Weird image, but I think I know what you mean.” Taeyong smiles, fondly. “Why are you so invested, anyway?” He prises the payroll folder from Yuta’s arms gently.

“Because they’re like family to me and I want them to be happy.” Yuta lets the folder go. He can tell he’s going to be kicked out of the office soon. Still, it was a nice ten minute break from the floor.

“Do you want _me_ to be happy?” Taeyong asks, sitting down at his desk and opening the folder.

“Yes, why?” Yuta perks up again. Maybe he won’t have to go back to work after all! “Who can I set you up with? Do you--”

“If you want me to be happy,” Taeyong cuts in. “Please can you get back to work? You’re meant to be tending bar, Yuta. We’ll continue to solve Doyoung and Jaehyun’s love-life crisis after closing, okay?”

They never get back to the conversation, but that's okay because soon it seems like Jaehyun and Doyoung are actually getting their act together and _doing_ something.

They are spotted by an unusually interested Johnny getting on the same bus after work one night, when. Yuta knows they live in opposite directions, and they smile more - both of them - around the club, even on nights when Doyoung is covering on the bar and even on nights when Jaehyun is on bathroom-checking duty at the end of the night (which everyone knows is the worst job).

Yuta is certain: they're in love. He just wonders if they'll ever admit it.

  


**5 months prior.**

 

Yuta gets something like an admission out of Doyoung on a rare night that they are both scheduled a night off from the club. Yuta lures Doyoung to his apartment with promises of a chilled night in completely at Yuta’s expense.

“I expected more than a six pack of warm beer and take-out noodles.” Doyoung picks up a can of beer and then decides otherwise and takes the whole pack over to the fridge.

“I think you expected too much. I'm behind on my rent, this is the best I have for you.” Yuta sulks. “And the clerk tricked me, I thought that beer was from the chilled fridge.”

Doyoung says, “Before you start, I know why you invited me over and to be honest I'm okay with it. Being grilled. I've accepted my fate. I just thought I might at least get a nice glass of Malbec out of it.”

Doyoung tells Yuta that he and Jaehyun have been hanging out a lot (which Yuta assumes is code for having sex), about how sweet he is and how his abs have ridges deeper than the Grand Canyon, and then he says, “So, on Friday, we, um, kissed.”

“That’s it? You kissed? I thought… “ Yuta struggles to get his head around the words. “For the _first_ time?”

“Yes.” Doyoung looks like he wants that beer now, except it's only been chilling for ten minutes. “Why?”

“Me and Taeyong were sure you’ve both been at it for months. You're _not_ sleeping together?” Yuta has to check, maybe he's misunderstanding the entire conversation.

Doyoung shakes his head.

“Are you _sure_ you’ve never sucked him off and forgotten about it?”

Doyoung yelps, looking incredibly affronted. “I would _not_ forget about that! Anyway the kiss was a one-off.”

“This amount of sexual tension is unhealthy and must be eradicated,” Yuta decides. “You need to tell him how you feel about him and jump his bones.”

“No.” Doyoung does go to the fridge now and pull out two beers. He doesn't seem happy with their temperature but he throws one to Yuta anyway.

“Why?”

“Because… What if I fuck up? What if we both fuck up?” The beer foams up when he flicks open the lid. “It’s nice like this… When we haven’t ruined it yet.”

Yuta sighs. Doyoung is breaking his heart here, it's so pathetic. “You can’t ruin it if you don’t even start it.”

“Exactly,” Doyoung says. “Fuck this, I'm going out for wine. Where's your nearest liquor store?”

  


**4 months prior**

 

Yuta eyes the envelope with terror. “Woah, what’s this?” He points at it accusingly. There is one word  written neatly in the centre: Taeyong, and it's so white, crisp and clean and there is only one thing that could be inside. Still, he hopes that Jaehyun has another explanation.

He doesn't.

“It’s my letter of resignation.” Jaehyun looks up from the mirror where he's blotting his lipgloss. He looks so casual, so cavalier about it that Yuta can't even think of how to respond. Jaehyun finishes pushing his hair back into the perfect casual quiff and stands up. He picks up the letter. “I'm handing it in before I start on shift tonight.”

“What?” Yuta follows him down the corridor. “Why? What's going on?”

“My brother’s offered me a job.” Jaehyun shrugs, his face a picture of carefully hidden emotion. “I’m moving back home for a while.”

“You’re running away?”

“No.” Jaehyun’s face only betrays him very slightly - the line between his eyebrows ever-so-slightly deepens. “I’m moving home for a while.”

Yuta manages to get ahead of him and blocks Jaehyun from entering the stairwell. He _knew_ something was off. Everyone had been having fun after work the weekend before. Taeil had bought a round of Tequila, Doyoung had been practically sitting in Jaehyun’s lap, and then the two of them had disappeared, not to be heard from again all weekend. As far as Yuta was concerned, the Deal (aka being blissfully in love) had been Sealed (aka they’d fucked) and he was ready to roast the hell out of them for it come Monday.

But when Monday had come round, Doyung was irritable and Jaehyun had taken a rest day and something was most definitely not right.

“What happened?” He puts his hand on Jaehyun’s arm. “What happened last weekend?”

“Nothing.” Jaehyun waits for Yuta to move so he can climb the stairs. Yuta doesn't. “Look, I need to– it’s just regular hours, no weekends, easy office admin. It’s a good job. I should accept it.”

“This isn’t about the job though, is it?” Yuta asks, and Jaehyun’s mask slips for a few seconds. Yuta frowns. Why are his friends doing this to themselves? Why are they _hurting_? Even Johnny had called them cute on multiple occasions, much to Doyoung's faux disgust. He doesn’t get it.

“He’ll understand,” Jaehyun says, his voice flat. “It probably wouldn't have worked out anyway.”

 

———

 

Jaehyun had left less than a fortnight later and Yuta had caught Doyoung with red, puffy eyes in the store room twice the next week, and now it’s four months later and Yuta is kind of sick of Doyoung's mopey face every time Jaehyun adds a new friend on Instagram and of Jaehyun’s awkward conversations about the club in which he name-checks every one of their friends except Doyoung, before giving in and adding, “but he's okay too, isn't he? He's doing ok?”

Yuta texts Jaehyun the details of the work social, while Sicheng is showering half a tube of body glitter away down Yuta’s bathtub. _Time to come back home?_ he texts, and Jaehyun starts typing a reply, but he never sends it.  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel free to yell @ me here and/or on my [twt](https://twitter.com/lilacsui) or [cc](https://curiouscat.me/rainingover) :3


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